Sojourn a journey through life

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 I got a job. So, as long as nothing blows up in my face, or otherwise goes awry, I will be (hopefully) starting work on October 17th at Lilly Systems Biology. It looks like a super-awesome place to work, and I’m quite excited about the whole situation.

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

Drinking Chocolate Heaven

Carly and I found this in the store the other day. If I remember correctly, I think it was Grant (hi Grant!) who told me that Cadbury made this stuff, and I think he said that he was able to purchase it in South Africa. If I’m wrong, well, sue me. At any rate, Starbucks Chantico has nothing on this stuff. YUM!

Um, like I said before, the pictures of Malaysia are coming, I promise. We’re off to Cirque du Soleil’s latest (Quidam) tonight, so that should be a super awesome time. I’ve not seen any of their shows before.

Monday, Monday…

Yesterday was a pretty great day. Carly and I got back from Malaysia on Sunday night (blog posting about that and pictures to come), and yesterday (being Monday) it was nice to get back settled at home and happily carry on with my coding and laundry duties while Carly was in a PD (Professional Development, for all you not-so-teacher-savvy types) day at the school.

I met her at school after she was done and we jumped on the bus down to Holland Village to drop some stuff off at the tailor, and then decided to pop into Starbucks for a coffee. What I couldn’t believe is that yesterday was the first time I’ve been to Starbucks since we’ve been in Singapore. Which means that I haven’t been to Starbucks for nearly 2 months. That is a world record for me. The last time I hadn’t had Starbucks for 2 months would have been… well… never? At least not since before I’d ever been to Starbucks in my life (Grade 10 – so um, 11 years ago?). At any rate, my double-tall-non-fat-caramel-macchiato was something to behold. Carly rather enjoyed her tall-non-fat-hazelnut-latte as well. She added a little scone to her order, and the whole thing set us back S$15 and change. Ouch.

After that, we did some grocery shopping at a nice new Cold Storage that was recommended to us, and I think it’s probably our new favorite grocery store.

Yesterday also marked the most impressive thunder and lightning storm we have seen yet here in Singapore. Absolutely wonderful – constant rumbling and crackling in the sky. Just amazing.

Well, that’s all for now, I promise we’ll post some Malaysia stuff shortly.

Spare Bedroom

So um, for the record, Carly and I do indeed have a spare bedroom. The reason you may not know about the “spare bedroom” is because we never posted a picture of it when we put up the photos of the apartment back in August sometime. The reason (see picture below):

So as you can see, this spare bedroom isn’t exactly our pride and joy. That being said, we promise that we’ll have it cleaned up for the first friend or family member to come and visit. Any takers?

What else – dinner last night. Cheap food example. We went to the hawker about a 10 minute walk from the school, we had 2 large plates of food consisting of cabbage, green beans, curry, rice, chicken, porkchop and potatoes for S$2.50/each, and had a plateful of 15 chicken satay skewers that came with a bunch of chopped cucumber and 2 bowls of awesome peanut/pineapple dipping sauce for S$5.20… We couldn’t eat it all. Dinner for 2, S$10.20 (give or take CDN$7.75).

Mind you, we went out on Sunday night with another couple to an amazing Mexican place down on Clarke Quay. Carly had some Beef Tortilla’s, and I got hooked up with a Pork Enchilada (YUM). We drank water, although there were bottles of Tequila available for prices as high as S$2400. Their specialty dessert was homemade avocado ice cream which was off the charts and unbelievably delicious. Dinner for 4 was around S$150.

So you can eat cheap, or you can eat pricey, all depends on what you want.

PS> Someone come visit

WOMAD Singapore

Last Sunday Carly and I found ourselves heading over to WOMAD (big musical festival thing-o) and met up with one of the teacher’s she works with. This was a great time. Quite an eclectic mix of musicians were there from all over the world. We saw bands from Mali, France, Malaysia, Singapore, India and Australia (and maybe some others).

The band we saw from Mali was an African rock group called Tinariwen which was quite interesting, really easy to listen to, and not at all your typical North American “top 40″.

A few other worthwhile mentions include a crazy group of teens/young adults from Singapore in a band called Wicked Aura Batucada. These guys make noise… A whole lot of noise. Definitely liked to put on a show, and quite a bit of fun for the crowd as well.

Probably the coolest group of the night (in my opinion anyways) was a band from India called The Dhol Foundation. Holy. These guys are an amazing piece of work. Fabulous drumming supported by an electric and bass guitarist. Absolutely outstanding. Too bad none of the pictures we took of them turned out.

Another group worth mentioning is the group from France (Les Yeux Noirs) that included two brothers who were violinists. I’m a big fan of the violin (among other stringed instruments) and these guys can put on a show. At one point, the one brother was resting his violin by just holding it under his chin, and the two of them were both playing on the one brothers violin. Unfortunately, describing it all in words isn’t quite the same. Hearing and seeing, now that was fabulous.

Oh! And there was food there, too (surprise, surprise). Carly and I ate the most deliciously yummy chocolate brownie we can remember. It was insane.

Bukit Batok Nature Park

The other week, Dan and I enjoyed a walk in the nature park close to our residence. Once the birds started to drown out the techno music coming from a super cool vehicle in the parking lot, our walk was very relaxing. It was neat to see new kinds of vegetation and wildlife.

We haven’t yet decided whether not running into any monkeys was fortunate or unfortunate. They are frequently sighted and have been know to chase or climb on peoples passing through. We did however get a laugh at this sign we saw on one of the trails, though we admit we quickly scanned the branches above us.

I’m sure we’ll definitely be returning to the park for a bunch more walks, as it’s so close to home. Hopefully next time we’ll remember to bring an umbrella. On our way home we got caught in our first Singapore “rain storm”. For the record, it doesn’t rain in Vancouver… The pathetic excuse for rain that we have in Vancouver is more like a light mist compared to the rain over here. It was quite the experience. After trying to save our digital camera and hand phones from the rain (we were completely drenchend, not a dry spot anywhere on our bodies, phones were already wet as well, you can get an idea from the pictures below), a little old Chinese lady who saw us trying to reorganize ourselves in the shelter of a bus stop took pity on us and gave us a plastic bag which she had removed some groceries from. Without that plastic bag, our camera and phones would have been wrecked, so we were very thankful.

O well, at any rate, enjoy the rest of the pictures: