Nike Human Race 10k

I joined a bazillion other people and ran the Nike "Human Race" 10k this weekend.

First thing you notice is Nike did some clever marketing for the race. Instead of providing a bib number in advance and a separate race shirt after the race, they provided the race shirt in advance, with the bib number ironed on (or maybe screen printed on, I can’t tell the difference).

So instead having people running in different shirts, with different colors and different logos, everyone in the race wore the exact same red Nike shirt. This created a giant Nike mobile marketing team, a sea of red Nike logos threading through Singapore's downtown and tourist areas.

The last organized race I ran in Singapore was the JP Morgan Chase 5.6k in April 2008, For that 5.6k, I finished in 42 minutes and 35 seconds, which was a pace of about 7 1/2 minutes per kilometer.

For the Nike 10k, I finished in 70 minutes and 18 seconds, or a pace of about 7 minutes per kilometer, giving me an improvement of 30-second per kilometer.

I was also happy about finishing several minutes faster than the Singapore average of 74 minutes and 24 seconds.

My finishing acheivement took on a different meaning on the subway home after the race. There was a young guy on the platform, also wearing his red Nike race shirt. Naturally, I asked him how he did, and he said he ran in 44 minutes. I said that was a great time, and told him how I did. He said my time was a great time too.

I figured he was just being polite, but when I started to compare his time to mine, he added, "yea... but how OLD are you?"

National Orchid Garden

I’m sure I’ve already mentioned that Singapore is unimaginably humid. But to give full justice to how persistently the heat and humidity defines Singapore, I ought to mention it in every blog.

Or really, every paragraph.

But rather than bore you with a perpetual refrain, we went to visit an attraction that thrives because of the weather - Singapore’s National Orchid Garden.

The National Orchid Garden is located within the Singapore Botanic Gardens. It is one of the main attractions of the gardens and covers three hectares (about 7 1/2 acres). It has more than 1,000 species of orchids and an additional 2,000 orchid hybrids. According to Wikipedia, it is considered by some to be among the finest collections of orchids in cultivation open to the public.

Some of the more exotic species of orchid are fiendishly difficult to grow in the United States because of the heat and humidity requirements.

Singapore, however, provides an abundance of both, along with a daily dose of tropical rain, all of which we endured on our tour.

The typical botanical garden in the US might maintain their orchids in a greenhouse, separate from the rest of their gardens. But in Singapore, the whole country is a greenhouse. So the orchids are growing outdoors. And instead of a greenhouse, they keep a cool house for the species that grow in a more highland tropical area and can’t handle the heat.

They also grow a series of “VIP” orchids, which are hybrids named after notable VIPs. Their collection includes Dendrobium Margaret Thatcher, named to commemorate Margaret Thatcher’s 1985 visit to the botanic gardens. Paravanda Nelson Mandella is named to commemorate Nelson Mandella’s 1997 visit.

And for my Norwegian relatives, Dendrobrium Anne-Marie Willoch is named after Anne-Marie Willoch, the wife of former prime minister of the Kingdom of Norway, to commemorate her visit to the gardens in 1986.

On a side note, there are more web pages referencing the orchid Dendrobrium Anne-Marie Willoch than for the actual person, Anne-Marie Willoch, or her husband, the Prime Minister, Kåre Willoch.

To help balance this oversight, I’ll note here that Kåre Willoch was a member of the Conservative Party, and he was considered one of the most pronounced conservative Norwegian politicians in his time. He served on the Oslo City Council from 1952 to 1959 and he served on the the Norwegian Parliament from 1957 to 1989. He was Prime Minister from 1981 to 1986, until his career was eclipsed by a flower named after his wife.

Our First Race In Singapore

On April 23, 2008, we ran in the JPMorgan Chase Corporate Challenge 5.6-kilometer race. This was our first race since we moved to Singapore. Deanna ran with a group of runners from her office at Yahoo! I didn't know anyone from Seagate running, so I put on a Yahoo! t-shirt and joined them.

I thought it would be fun to film the run with my handheld camera. We have an inexpensive digital camera, which is pretty much like all digital cameras today, it also has the ability to take short movies.



I did my best to follow Deanna's Yahoo! coworkers through the sold-out crowd of 12,700 runners. But it was the first time I'd met some of them, so it was hard for me to recognize them among the other runners.

I carried the camera in my right hand, filming as I ran. I also carried a water bottle in my left hand as a counter-balance to the camera. To get good shots, though, I had to hold the camera over my head while I was running as I took short movies and still shots.

I hate to make excuses, but I think running with one hand over my head may have added quite a bit of time to my run, which you can see as I cross the finish line in the video.

www.flickr.com

Kovan Wet Market

Across the street from our condo complex is the Kovan Wet Market. Actually, there’s a lot more then that -- there’s also a hawker center, the Heartland Mall, a Kovan subway station, and the former bus interchange.

The wet market is one of the more entertaining areas near our condo. Its covered against the rain and all powerful sun, but its outdoors. And its not called a “wet” market for nothing; be careful what shoes to wear. You'd think that sanitation would be a problem, but millions of people shop from the wet markets in Singapore (and no doubt elsewhere around the world) without any ill effects. Having shopped mostly at western supermarkets, however, its quite a new experience.



As you can see from the quick video, there are dozens of different stalls selling sell fresh fruits and vegetables, together with fish, poultry, and other meat. They will butcher your meat for you on the spot. We went to get fruit, but we spent some time watching the fishmongers set up their stalls and prep and sell their fish. Being the squeamish westerners that we are, we did not buy any fish or meat.

We did have to haggle over the prices. Everything in Singapore has three prices, from highest to lowest: the tourist price, the expat price, and the local price. We can usually avoid the tourist price, but we never get the local price. We'll be walking away thinking we got a good deal, as overhear them quoting next customer about half of what we paid.

But at least we're not paying in US dollars.

Love Classes in Singapore?

Did you know that Singapore has a government match-making agency, known as the "Social Development Unit"?

TELEGRAPH
Thomas Bell, Bangkok
March 25, 2008

The Singapore Government is offering students lessons in seduction to boost the city state's flagging birthrate. Students at two polytechnics can earn two credits towards their final degree by choosing the love elective. Activities include watching romantic films, holding hands and "love song analysis".

Isabel Seet, an 18-year-old mechanical engineering student, told the Straits Times newspaper: "My teacher said if a guy looks into my eyes for more than five seconds, it could mean that he is attracted to me and I stand a chance."

Besides "love and sexuality", the curriculum also deals with the importance of family life. The "trainers" are provided by the Social Development Unit, a government match-making agency. But it is not so easy to put Singaporean youth in the mood for love. Another student who did the course, Kamal Prakash, said: "I'm not really looking for a girlfriend now as I want to concentrate on my studies."

The Singapore Flyer

Deanna booked us tickets on the Singapore Flyer, which is self-described as

"a giant observation wheel that features brilliant engineering breakthroughs a world apart from the traditional ferris wheel, is set to be Asia's most visible iconic visitor attraction."

The Flyer was just recently completed. It opened earlier this month. Reportedly it had been completely booked up in advance for some time. But they seemed to have set aside some tickets for tourists and locals to get in between the all the advanced sales.

Either that, or the all booked up story was just marketing hype. Our reservations were for Friday night at 8:30 pm. We arrived about 1/2 hour early as recommended, but some capsules were completely empty. In fact, we just missed getting our own empty car. And in retrospect we should have tried harder to get the empty one, because the passengers we ended up sharing with almost spoiled the ride.

But first they sent us through a security check nearly as invasive as the US Transportation Security Administration. Then--even though there was nobody in line ahead of us--they made us go through a rope maze queue designed for large crowds. Next, the obligatory photo shoot in a mock up of the capsules to sell you as an after-ride souvenir.

Finally, we got onboard our capsule. The air-conditioned capsules are pretty high tech, comfortable, and dramatically highlighted in cold blue lighting. But we had to share the capsule with about 6 children and their drunken parents who arrived through the queue immediately after us. Throughout the ride, the kids cycled through two stages of (1) screaming happy, or (2) screaming angry. Their parents alternated between (1) drunkenly chasing them around the capsule, and (2) drunkenly doing nothing whatsoever.

Ignoring the kids, we focused on the view, which really was worth all the hassle. We went at night and the Singapore nighttime skyline is beautiful. The flight is about 30 minutes and you can walk around the capsule and see the downtown, the east coast, and far out over the bay with all of the big container ships waiting to get into the harbor. Very dramatic.

The area around the flyer is still being developed. It looked like they are building some grandstands nearby for the Formula 1 race that is coming to Singapore this summer. I think the area will be a great destination when finally developed. Surrounding the flyer they had some restaurants and wine bars and some retail spaces open. But about half of the area was still unfinished and waiting for tenants.

According to their literature, they are soon going to introduce a “Signature Cocktail Flight” which includes express boarding. Maybe holding a “unique cocktail served by your Singapore Flyer host” it will be easier to tolerate the drunken antics of the other passengers. And hopefully, no kids allowed.

We've moved

We've moved. This week, we finally moved out of the service apartment and into our condo. You can still contact us in the United States at this address and phone number:

Eric and Deanna Pesik
PMB 369
245 Mount Hermon Rd Ste M
Scotts Valley, CA 95066-4045
Phone: 831-240-4541 (Santa Cruz)

We are very excited to finally be in permanent housing. We'll send more updates after we get settled.



We spent the first month in a service apartment at Central Place.

It was OK. It was close to work, but it was never "home." It always felt like we were living in a hotel.

Our shipping container from the US arrived last week. We've been spending the week unpacking our stuff and putting it away in our new place. It is starting to feel like home.

Now we live here at Kovan Melody. It doesn't quite feel like home yet.

As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again

You'll never be hungry in Singapore.

The food is fresh and plentiful. Singapore has hawker stands, food courts, and restaurants everywhere. You can get any kind of food you want, Asian, Indian, European, Western. Anything. Anywhere. If you stay away from the touristy spots, you can get your food cheap or at least very reasonably priced. And best of all, they make it for you fresh on the spot.



You need a lot of places to eat when you need to feed nearly 5 million people every day. To compare that to California, if you combine all the cities in Santa Clara County, it comes to about 2 million people in 1,300 square miles. Singapore has less than 300 square miles for almost 5 million people. That’s less than a quarter the area for more than double the population. It works out to about twelve times the population per square mile. So I figure Singapore needs about twelve times the number of restaurants per square mile. And that means a lot of places to eat.



And that how it is. You can find something to eat everywhere. The only thing you can't find (a least not at a reasonable prices) is a good beer or glass of wine. Singapore has very high tariffs on alcohol, so you have to pay a premium for your drink. To make matters worse, you can't find good California wines here. There's some OK Australian and New Zealand wines and a few decent bottles from France. But nothing compares to our great California wines, and there's almost none here. It’s terribly sobering.



Are you coming to visit from California soon? Singapore allows you to bring in 1 liter of wine duty free with each adult. If you are wondering what to bring us in Singapore, please stop by your local Trader Joe's and pick me up a good bottle of California wine. (If you forget the wine, Singapore also allows you to bring in any amount of currency.)

Eating in Singapore can also be a surprise. We've been eating fish every day. Not intentionally. See, there are all kinds of pastry shops that sell perfectly normal-looking breads, donuts, and pastries. Some of them are indeed perfectly normal, filled with chocolate or custard or cream or something else appropriately sweet. Others only appear normal. When you bite into them however, you find your doughnut is filled with fish or pork and some greasy secret sauce inconsistent with your anticipated donut experience.



The other thing about eating in Singapore is you have to bring your own napkins. Not in the expensive restaurants catering to westerners--they have all the usual western amenities. But in normal restaurants where the locals go, everyone carries their own little tissue packs and napkins with them.



More importantly, if you eat to the hawker stands or indoor or outdoor food courts, you need your little pack of tissues to reserve a seat. Due to the other 5 million people trying to find a place to eating at the same time as you, there aren't enough tables in all 300 square miles for everyone to sit. So before you order, you have to reserve an empty seat. If you skip this step, you'll end up holding a tray of food with nowhere to put it down. You reserve your table by leaving your little tissue pack on the table. Only then can you go order. When its really crowded here (uh, all the time), you'll see people hovering over likely tables to be first to claim them when the current occupants are finished.

I suppose you could claim a table with your umbrella, or cell phone, or shoulder bag, or anything else, but you'll be less disappointed to loose my tissue pack if it turns out that the Singaporeans are bit less "law and order" than they say.

Night Safari

We've been very busy since we got to Singapore. Last weekend we went on the Night Safari at the Singapore zoo. I wish we remembered to bring our camera, because we came right up close to hyenas, elephants, Asian deer, lions, giraffe, tiger, bats, and many more.

They have separate walking trails and a tram that runs through the park. We did both. And as the name says, it all takes place at night. In the twilight.

On the walking trails, you are mostly separated from the animals' living areas by fencing or moats. But on the safari tram, there is usually nothing separating you from most of the animals. Some of them come right up to the tram.

A couple highlights were the bats and the flying squirrels. They have a few very large areas in the jungle, enclosed top to bottom with fencing and set up as a walk-in cage. One was for bats. Another for flying squirrels. They draw the animals out by feeding them near the trails inside the cage. They came so close you could almost touch them.

These pictures are from the Singapore zoo web page. Its probably ok that we didn't bring our own camera, because they don't allow flash photography during the Night Safari anyway. It disturbs the animals. Of course that didn't stop some people from flashing cameras at the animals, or flashlights, or even bright multi-colored flashing-spinning toys!

Just like at home.

We've arrived

Yes, we've arrived.

But first a short recap: We sold our house and our cars. Auctioned away or gave away almost all of our furniture. Downsized our clothing. Packed some bags. And flew to Singapore with one-way tickets and no return date.

Ok, that sounds more dramatic and braver than it really was, because we left with jobs waiting for us in Singapore. And our company moved us. And we didn't downsize so much that we don't have a shipping container on a boat somewhere, scheduled to arrive in Singapore in about 2 more weeks.


We had thes privilege of flying business class. We flew United Airlines, flight 853, to Tokyo-Narita airport, connecting to United 803 to Singapore. Other airlines have direct flights to Singapore, but not on our company's approved list of carriers. I didn't mind taking a connecting flight, because it helps break up the long overseas flight. Its almost eleven hours to Tokyo, and then another six to Singapore.

And, since we flew business class, we also had the pleasure of using the business class lounge in Narita where we could enjoy a perfectly poured beer from the famous Narita beer machine.

Our flight arrived in Singapore just before midnight, but we didn't get our luggage and clear customs until well into the morning. We had six suitcases between the two of us, mostly clothing. That may seem like a lot to travel with, but we don't know when the rest of our stuff will arrive, so we had to bring at least a couple of weeks of clothing.

Our relocation company arranged to have a driver waiting for us at the airport, but they didn't anticipate us having so many suitcases. The driver smiled and called in reinforcements in the form of a mini-van. A short drive later, we arrived at our service hotel, where we have been spending for the last two weeks.