Fifteen Hours Ahead

Happy New Year 2009!

noreply@blogger.com (Expat Eric) — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 10:07:00 +0000

Some good friends invited us to join them at their local "neighborhood bar," the 1TwentySix on East Coast Parkway. We sat outside in the warm Singapore evening. The bar had a band and a DJ to help us ring in 2009. You can't see from this picture, but we danced so hard we had sweat spilling out of us.

Or maybe it was wine spilling out. The bar had a voucher system. The cover charge came with five tickets, each ticket good for one drink. Or you could combine 6 tickets and have them bring a bottle of wine. When you ran short of tickets, they cheerfully let you "top up" the difference with cash. I lost count of the bottles of wine the waiters brought, so its a good thing I was busy dancing most of the night.

My new year resolution: dance more.

Vietnam

noreply@blogger.com (Expat Eric) — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:49:00 +0000

We just got back from spending our Christmas holiday in Vietnam.

Normally, we like to arrange our own travel, but we got a late start organizing this trip. That, combined with the holiday rush, we had to rely on a travel agent to make the arrangements. I never used a travel agent before, and they definitely made our planning easier.

But they also made the trip more expensive. And the more busy. Normally we’d leave ourselves tons of free time to just explore whatever and whenever we feel like. But the travel agent crammed all kinds of activities into our trip.

We’ll plan our next trip ourselves, now that we know the basics of traveling in Vietnam.

We started in Hanoi, where we stayed at the Melia Hotel. This was a Spanish-owned hotel (or at least a Spanish-themed hotel), as all the facilities had vaguely Spanish names, such as El Patio Restaurant, Cava Lounge, and the Latino Bar where we finished most evenings with tapas and cocktails.

For our first day in Hanoi, we took a rickshaw tour of Hanoi’s Old Quarter and walked around the shops.

We also learned how to cross the street. There are almost no traffic signals, and the few in place are largely ignored. You learn to walk slowly but confidently through the traffic, don’t change pace, don’t hesitate. The motorbikes and cars will flow around you like water. Nobody can move fast anyway, so you won’t get hurt too badly if you get hit.

The next day, we visited the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and His Former Residences.

We also visited the Vietnam War History Museum. As Americans, we immediately think of "The" Vietnam War, meaning the American war in Vietnam.

But for the Vietnamese, their war history begins long before that, with the battles against Mongol and Chinese generals thousands of years ago, and continuously through hundreds of years under Chinese rule.

Of course, the War History Museum eventually makes its way to the French colonial wars leading to The Vietnam War that we Americans think about. We all have a general familiarity with the facts of the Vietnam War. But it was enlightening to see it conveyed from another point of view, as perceived from the Vietnamese side.

We took a two-day side trip from Hanoi to visit Halong Bay, at the mouth of the Red River Delta.

The bay is one of the UNESCO World Heritage sites, filled with thousands of limestone rock islands.

We climbed to the peak of one island. Some of the islands have large caves. We explored one island cave by foot. Some caves open only to the water, and I explored one bat-filled cave by kayak. While I was out kayaking in the dark, Deanna visited a floating fishing village.

I also attempted squid fishing, without any luck (or skill, I might add).

For Christmas Eve, we spent the night on the bay, cruising in a wooden junk, designed and furnished in traditional Vietnamese style, but fitted for leisure travelers like us.

They offered nice comfortable accommodations, better than many hotels I’ve stayed at. We had Christmas dinner on the boat, with Vietnamese/Asian food and a traditional western-style holiday feast of turkey, stuffing, gravy; everything you’d expect for Christmas dinner in Vietnam.

The next day our fellow boat-mates took a Tai Chi lesson on the sun deck. We ignored them and slept late.

After breakfast on the boat, we cruised back to the port, where our guide and driver met us for the journey back up along the Red River Delta and returned us to Hanoi. Along the way, we marveled at the locals carrying their goods on motorbikes to sell at the local markets.

What is the most you’ve ever carried on a bike or motorcycle?

A flock of ducks:

A clutch of chickens:

Three dozens dustbrooms:

A roll of six foot-high fencing:

A small cow (yes, a cow, there were pigs too, but I didn't get the photo):

A flower garden:

Several barrels of water:

A carton of toilet paper:

Seventeen cases of bottled water (including 3 cases on your lap):

Your two best friends:

A nuclear family:

Everything else:

Back in Hanoi, we checked back into the Melia Hotel for the next two nights. We spent our last days in Hanoi wandering around the Old Quarter. We bought some local art to bring home. We hung out at various cafes. We watched the traffic. We practiced crossing the street. We saw a water puppet show (which was touristy but surprisingly good, even though we didn’t understand any of the Vietnamese). We got caught in the rain.

Breaking News

noreply@blogger.com (Expat Eric) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 03:06:00 +0000

Barack Obama is elected in the United States, but who manages to get her photo on the front page (above the fold, no less) of TWO newspapers in Singapore?

President Barack Obama

noreply@blogger.com (Expat Eric) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 07:14:00 +0000

I'm still in awe. I witnessed history today as Barack Obama was elected president of the United States.

Its Wednesday in Singapore but still Tuesday night in the USA. Deanna went to the American Club this morning to watch the election results. They were hosting an elections party. Both sides were there together, Democrats and Republicans, watching the results unfold slowly as each state closed their polls and CNN revealed their projections.

I was working and trying to keep from being distracted by the elections.

But the internet always distracts. Throughout the morning, I clicked back and forth to CNN.com to see what was going on.

By mid-morning, the eastern states had all been predicted. McCain hit the end of his road when CNN announced Pennsylvania for Obama. McCain could not win without Pennsylvania.

At this point, it was officially still an open election, but the reporters were all waiting until the west coast polls closed to make the call.

The networks called it simultaneously the moment the west cost polls closed. Obama clinched the presidency.

It is the most important and most anticipated election of my generation. But it was unreal. The victory didn't sink in. Not until CNN streamed McCain's concession speech did I realize that Obama had really won. And then I couldn't work any longer.

I took a taxi to the American Club, and I arrived in time to catch Obama's victory speech. I was standing in the back. I couldn't find Deanna in the crowd. I watched from the back.

When I found Deanna, I hugged her. And we cried.

Lisbon, Portugal

noreply@blogger.com (Expat Eric) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 05:07:00 +0000

Lisbon was our last stop in Europe, before returning home to Singapore.

We were here for a week, but we were not here for fun. Deanna had to attend a business conference during the day, and I spent most of the day in my hotel room working remotely from my laptop.

I don't have any good pictures of the hotel room because it was too stylish to photograph.

Like a ninja. Our hotel room was completely black. So much black that there was no reflected light. So much black that even in the bright of day, with the blinds open and the room lights on, you couldn't see yourself well enough to shave in the bathroom mirror.

Not just the guest rooms, Deanna said the conference rooms were also all black.

See, this hotel was a self-described "style hotel." And to prove it, they made sure that their style superseded your function. They celebrated the geometric flat surface of the bathroom walls and doors by refusing to install hooks or towel racks. And to make sure you keep your towels to yourself, they made the doors go all the way to the ceiling so you couldn't even drape your towel over the door.

They suffered no power outlets or handles or knobs or any other clumsy devices that might interrupt the perfect flatness of the perfectly black walls.

Even our room number was banned from the door. You had to look along the floor to find your room. Walking to your room was a featureless corridor of black. Like a morgue. Or Princess Leia's prison cell on the Death Star.

Other useful things for which the stylish have no need: irons and ironing boards. I don't know about you, but when I travel for business, one of the first things I do when I arrive is unpack my business shirts and give them a quick touch up with the iron. Feel free to call the cleaning service.

One plus: they had good wireless internet access (extra charge), and I was able to work without too much trouble once I also discovered how to access the concealed power outlets.

It was a strange hotel, but it was was comfortable and it made a good jumping-off point to see Lisbon because it was just a short walk to the local metro station.

In addition to seeing Lisbon, I made one day trip out to Sintra, which was about an hour's train ride east.

I had never heard of Sintra before. But when we were back in Barcelona, the clerk at the hotel said that Sintra was the most beautiful place in Portugal, and we had to see it. So I did.

But mostly I went there to see the castles.

Everybody loves castles, don't they? Especially boys like me who grew up playing Dungeons & Dragons and medieval war games. But its not just us Ren-Faire geeks and gamer boys. You will find tourists of all persuasions out to see the castles.

Its not just the castle itself that draws you, but everything that a castle implies: swords and shields, knights in armor, moats and siege engines. Everything that castles were built to withstand, all of the manual and mechanical devices of medieval warfare that became obsolete with the introduction of gunpowder.

For some reason, it seems more romantic, more honorable to fight wars with swords instead of guns. And castles represent this romantic ideal. As the great sage, Kool Moe Dee, teaches:

Guns, we don't like to use them
Unless, our enemies choose them
We prefer to fight you on like a man
And beat you down with our hands

Sant Sadurni d'Anoia, Spain

noreply@blogger.com (Expat Eric) — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 23:37:00 +0000

We took a day trip from Barcelona to go wine tasting in Spain's Cava region. It felt good to be in a wine-growing region. It reminded us of back home in California.

Cava, we learned, is Spanish sparkling wine, produced mainly in the Penedès region in Catalonia, Spain. This region is an easy day trip from Barcelona, just inland and south west. It was a relaxing tour bus ride through the Spanish countryside.

From the bus, we saw the massive rock formation that makes up the jagged Montserrat mountain. We didn't get to visit Montserrat, but I'm curious, because it is supposed to be one of the possible locations of the Holy Grail from the legends of Kind Authur.

We did see the village of Sant Sadurní d'Anoia and the surrounding area, which produces nearly 95% of Spain's total Cava output. This is where the most famous (or most prolific) Spanish Cava is produced by the winery Freixenet.

Even though I've become big fan of Champagne and Prosecco and other sparkling wines, we didn't go for the Cava this time. For this trip, we went after the Spanish reds. After drinking our share of the local reds, we each bought a couple of bottles to take home -- but not too many bottles, mind you, because Singapore has very strict limits and very high import duties on wine and spirits.

Then we both took a well-earned nap on the bus on the way back to Barcelona.

Barcelona, Spain

noreply@blogger.com (Expat Eric) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:51:00 +0000

We originally planned to take the train from London to France and then on to Spain. But we were surprised to learn that the Eurail train is more expensive than flying. We already had the experience of taking the Eurostar channel tunnel train on a previous trip from London and Paris, so we decided to skip the trains this time and just fly straight to Barcelona.

One of the cool things about Barcelona is how compact it can be. Nearly everything we wanted to see was in the "Old Town" area on either side of La Rambla or in the Gothic Quarter. Our hotel was on the edge of the Gothic Quarter (on the center right of the map), just a few blocks from La Rambla.

I'm not the only one to say this: if you do only one thing in Barcelona, you must walk La Rambla, from the bottom at the harbor, to the top at Placa de Catalyuna. It is the one thing that everyone recommends.

As you walk this pedestrian mall, you'll pass cafes, bars, restaurants. You'll see hawkers selling birds and turtles; tourist shops selling typical baubles and trinkets. Its similar to Pacific Avenue in our hometown, Santa Cruz, only more so.

One of the fun things to find along La Rambla is every sort of common slacker made up as a human statue tacitly asking for small change. They’ll spend hours standing around semi-patiently dressed as random pop-culture references doing little tricks for tourists.

Here are some of the ones we photographed. My favorite one is the first guy in this series, who made subtle little faces appropriate for his task:

Given the diversity and creativity of Barcelona's street talent, I suggest we send our own Pink Umbrella Man of Santa Cruz out to Barcelona to take some fashion lessons.

As I mentioned above, we stayed at the edge of the Gothic Quarter, which was almost as much fun as La Rambla. The Gothic Quarter is a dense maze of old medieval buildings, with thin streets winding seemingly randomly through them.

From our hotel, we were just a few steps away from Barcelona's cathedral, La Seu, protected from the main street by old Roman battlements.

The cathedral is dedicated to Santa Eulalia, who was killed by the Romans in some horrible way for being unapologetically Christian, and who now serves as the patron saint for the local sailors.

At some point in every trip to Europe, you get tired of seeing yet another cathedral. And at Barcelona is where this started to happen to me. But what made this cathedral worthwhile was the cloister of geese protecting the church gardens. The geese also represent the virginity of Santa Eulalia. Apparently, there are 13 geese to represent the age of Eulalia when she was killed.

Barcelona has a fabulous street scene, day or night. And its not limited to just La Rambla. The medieval streets themselves are so fun to wander, it draws out the locals and tourists alike to join in the fun. We spent several afternoons and evenings just walking around watching people and looking for places to hang out or eat or drink.

Of course no visit to Barcelona is complete without visiting the various creations by Antoni Gaudí throughout the city.

The most obvious Gaudí attraction is the Sagrada Família, one of the most famous churches in the world. It is still unfinished, after more than a century of construction. Sure, its yet another cathedral, but unlike any other cathedral in the world. Actually, its not technically a Cathedral, but a temple; its full name is the Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família./

I don't know what the difference is between temple, cathedral, abbey, or church.

Continuing on our Gaudí tour, we went to the rounded, organic apartment building La Pedrera. Unfortunately, we couldn't get inside because we came to late. We did manage to spend an afternoon in the Alice-in-Wonderlandish Park Güell, which Gaudí designed and lived with his family in the early 1900s.

In addition to seeing the works of Gaudí, we also made it to the Salvador Dalí museum and the Pablo Picasso Museum. And we got out of the city to the Spanish countryside for a bit of wine tasting.

I first wanted to go to Barcelona after I graduated from college and was living in an apartment in Santa Cruz. My housemate, Dag, and I used to go to a local dive bar, called the "One Double-Oh Seven," named after its address of 1007 Soquel Avenue, Santa Cruz. The bar was walking distance from our apartment, so Dag and I could play pool not worry about driving.

The thing about playing pool in bars is you only get to play as long as you are winning. If there are people waiting, whoever is next in line takes the place of player that looses the match. The new player pays for the game.

If you keep winning, you can play all night and never have to pay for your own games. But if you're with the bar with friends, you probably want to play together as long as you can. If one of you looses early, then you have to wait until your friend's name moves up from the bottom of the chalkboard waiting list until you can play together again.

If you sink the 8-ball in typical bar pool, you loose. Game over. The next challenger struts over to take your place and start a new game. If you had a good game, that's okay. But if you just started a game and accidentally sink the 8-ball in the first few rounds, then it spoils your fun to walk away early. You can't hide the sunk 8-ball, because all the challengers are watching your game, waiting for their chance to play. They all know when you loose.

That's why we invented a pool game we called "Barcelona-7." In Barcelona-7, you play by normal bar rules unless you sink the 8-ball early. When that happens, if a challenger approaches the table, you tell him "we're playing Barcelona-7."

Nobody ever asked what that meant. I think because they didn't want to admit there was something they don't know about pool. What it really meant was we were going to keep playing. And for the rest of the game we treated the 7-ball like it was the 8-ball. It is helpful that bar pool rules tend to vary from bar to bar, so its rare that anyone is 100% sure of the local house rules anyway.

I think we came up the name Barcelona-7, because we happened to be practicing putting "English" on the ball for making trick shots. Some drunk guys were tying to be clever and were joking about putting some "Spanish" on the ball. Which is when we improvidently sunk the 8-ball and wanted to keep playing. "Spanish" of course triggered "Barcelona-7," which sounded just slightly exotic and convincing enough to justify keeping the table.

That story has no real connection to the actual city of Barcelona, other than sharing the description "slightly exotic."

The Roman Town of Bath

noreply@blogger.com (Expat Eric) — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 05:20:00 +0000

After seeing what the prehistorics did with their bare hands in Stonehenge, we also went to see what the Romans did when they had their chance to have a go at things in the nearby Roman town of Bath.

The Romans had better building techniques and modern tools for stone cutting. They also took advantage of two important inventions: They understood the weight-bearing ability of arches (probably a “discovery” more than an “invention”). And they developed a modern concrete mixture of cement, lime, sand, volcanic ash, and finely crushed rock or brick.

Like today’s concrete, Roman concrete hardens even under water, which is important when you need to build pools, drains, bridges, dams, and aqueducts. The Romans used all these features during their occupation of England to build the famous baths at the naturally-occurring hot spring in today’s English city of Bath.

The location of Bath was originally a Celtic town before Romans wandered in. But the Romans made it famous for the alleged medicinal power of the waters. They used the water from the hot springs to fill the bath house. And nearby, they build a Temple to the Roman goddess Minerva (Sulis Minerva).
Similar to today, the combination of bath house and Minerva temple attracted tourists and religious pilgrims from around the Empire, which in turn brought wealth and prosperity to the town.

Various authorities have called Minerva the goddess of intelligence, creativity, poetry, and wisdom. Some claim she was the goddess of domestic skills, handicrafts, and commerce. Others claim she was was the goddess of warriors or medicine. At least one myth says she was the inventor of music.

Like most Roman gods, Minerva was copied from the Greeks, where she was known as the Greek goddess Athena. And the copying didn’t stop with the Romans. My kindred Californians copied her again when they designed the Great Seal of the State of California.

Adopted in 1849, the Great Seal was designed by Major Robert Selden Garnett of the United States Army, and it was introduced to the new state at California's constitutional convention, where it was described as follows:

"The foreground figure represents the Goddess Minerva having sprung full grown from the brain of Jupiter. She is introduced as a type of the political birth of the State of California without having gone through the probation of a Territory. At her feet crouches a grizzly bear feeding upon clusters from a grape vine emblematic of the peculiar characteristics of the country. A miner is engaged in a rocker and bowl at his side, illustrating the golden wealth of the Sacramento upon whose waters are seen shipping typical of commercial greatness and the Snow-clad peaks of the Sierra Nevada make up the background while above is the Greek motto 'Eureka' (I have found it) applying either to the principle involved in the admission of the State, or the success of the miner at work."

Global political and religious connections are everywhere. It makes us Californians feel welcome among the Roman ruins.

But it also illustrates how our own country was once much more religiously tolerant than we are today. I can imagine the extreme religious right getting all incensed today if the legislature proposed symbolizing our state as a female pagan goddess sprung from the brain of another pagan god.

The Romans and their gods were eventually forced out of England in the 5th century. Not by the religious right, but buy the Saxons. The Saxons were subsequently forced out by the Normans, who abandoned the city of Bath after trashing the place. The hot springs of Bath were forgotten until rediscovered in 18th century and restored in the Victorian period.

Today Bath is a modern English city. There is a museum on the site of the original Roman Baths and the temple to Minerva still stands. At some point, the British recovered the original head of the "Sulis-Minerva" statue and returned it to the site.

Adding to the religious diversity, the Christian Bath Abbey sits across the street from the original Roman pagan temple.

But even the Christians never agreed among themselves who’s religion was best. The first church was built by the Anglo-Saxons in AD 757. When the Norman’s forced them out, they tore down the Saxon Abby and replaced it with a massive Norman cathedral. Unfortunately, the cathedral was so big that the monastery could not afford to maintain it, so it fell into disrepair and ruin like the original roman temple. The current Abbey church was built in 1611.

Today, same as then, the temples and baths continue to attract tourists from around the world, bringing wealth and prosperity to the town.

Taste Test Challenge

noreply@blogger.com (Expat Eric) — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 02:16:00 +0000

English food has a terrible reputation worldwide. Why? Well I can give you at least one example. The last time we were in England, we had a breakfast in our hotel. It consisted of eggs and sausages boiled in grease. Yes. Not fried. Boiled. The grease wasn't hot enough to fry, just sort of a warm simmering pan of week-old oil. Boiled long enough to absorb the greasy flavor of everything else they cooked in the same oil that week, but not hot or long enough to actually fry the egg or fully cook the sausages. If you accidentally cooked this at home, you would throw away and start over.

But to be fair, that was hotel food. And it was a very cheap hotel at that.

Is the rest of English food all that bad?

One way to find out is to do a taste test. Based on my previous experience, I didn't want to set the bar to high. So I had to find some type of food to give England a sporting chance.

So my taste test challenge is English Food vs. Airplane Food. It seemed like an obvious match-up of historically bad cuisine. And I didn't have access to other obvious contenders: hospital food or high school cafeteria food.

But it is not fair to represent all of England by one cheap hotel breakfast. So to find a better ambassador for the Empire, I went to a traditional pub in the afternoon and ordered one of the specials off their hand-written chalkboard menu.

Please meet today's contestants:

English Food	Airplane Food
click to enlarge	click to enlarge
The Defending Champ: On the left, representing England, a traditional pub meal from an inn in Wiltshire county.	The Challenger: On the right, representing the air travel industry, from Singapore Airlines Flight SQ-318
Weighing In With: Grilled sausages, potatoes, carrots, peas, gravy on everything, a basked of pre-buttered sliced bread, apple pie (not shown), and a pint of cold beer.	Weighing In With: Grilled beef, potatoes, carrots, crackers, cheese, one bread roll, shrimp salad with packet of thousand-island dressing on the side, and a tiny plastic cup of water.
Scoring: Visual Appeal: 8 Ambiance: 8 Taste: 9 Beer: Yes	Scoring: Visual Appeal: 3 Ambiance: 1 Taste: 5 Beer: No

The winner by unanimous decision: English Pub Food. No contest really. A meal with only a tiny plastic cup of water will never compare to anything with a pint of beer. There is nothing better than a generous country farm meal served with beer in a traditional English pub.

In fact, everything we ate in England was good, and with generous western-sized portions and friendly, but never overly persistent waiters.

As much as I've enjoyed all the variety of Asian food back in Singapore, noodles and rice can get old now and then. It is fabulous to get back to the west where you can enjoy a hearty meat-and-potatoes supper. Congratulations England!

Stonehenge

noreply@blogger.com (Expat Eric) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 14:51:00 +0000

Our trip to England got a bit further out when we visited Stonehenge.

This is one of those nearly mythical places that you hear about all your life. But I never expected to ever see it in person.

You have to drive several hours from London to see Stonehenge, or take a bus as we did, to the English county of Wiltshire. But to visit such an enduring icon, the journey is well worth it.

There is no end to the speculation about who built it, why they built it, or how they built it.

Stonehenge has been credited, at one time or another, to the Phoenicians, Celts, Romans, Sumerians, Druids, extraterrestrials, wizards, and all sorts of other paranormal beings. It has been called a solar calendar, a Buddhist shrine, a temple of animal worshipers, or altar where defeated soldiers were sacrificed for blood offerings to heathen gods.

Archeologists continue to argue over which race or culture is responsible for building it, and how old it is.

Not to diminish its mystery, but I don't see the need to create any big cultural or spiritual explanation for why someone would want to build a big circle of stones.

Guys do this stuff all the time. Just hanging out, having reached some tacit group understanding to dig a big hole and half-bury some rocks in it.

Add beer (invented long before Stonehenge) and repeat. And Stonehenge is not the only evidence of group drinking spots in England. There are over 900 stone rings in the British Isles, and scholars say that twice as many may have existed before modern men started knocking them down. Also frequently the result of beer drinking.

I'm guessing building it was a lot more work in the old days. But ancient civilizations built a lot bigger things using only manual labor. It doesn't seem much different than any gathering of able bodied men with access to simple tools, alcohol, and a lot of free time. Well, at least until the "clever" one decides to go all artistic and line up a few rocks with the sunrise and sunset.

Whatever the reason they decided to build it all those thousands of years ago, they certainly captured the imagination of many generations.

And rightfully so. It is a very impressive monument. And it gets even more impressive the closer you approach.

You used to be able to walk right up and touch it, and climb on the rocks. Not anymore. But keeping people out of it makes it a more powerful experience to see up close. It doesn't need any ancient magical powers to be a place of wonder. There is no question that Stonehenge is (and was) a site of great awe and wonder.

London England and Windsor Castle

noreply@blogger.com (Expat Eric) — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 12:15:00 +0000

We spent a long weekend visiting England, the political motherland for our great country.

We started our weekend in the City of London, where we ran all around the city on the bus and underground, but also took a tour bus out to Windsor to see the Castle.

This is supposed to be the oldest and largest "occupied" castle in the world. Apparently, at least one English royal sometimes lives there, justifying its more formal name, "The Official Residences of The Queen And The Official Residence of The Prince of Wales."

Nobody explained why the "residences" are plural for the Queen but singular, "residence," for the Prince. Maybe the Prince only has one room? Or maybe it’s related to the fact that the Queen really does stay at Windsor Castle on the weekends, but the Prince does not?

Other than her statute, we didn't get to see the actual Queen during our visit. But our tour guide insisted that the Queen really does stays in Windsor Castle for the weekend. Apparently she commutes back to London for the workweek, where our guide says she works just like you and me.

I doubt that the Queen's job is much like you or me. Start with her job title, "Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith." Put that on your business card.

With a job title like that it nearly justifies earning nearly as much money as JK Rowling.

What can you say about the Queen’s place in Windsor?

Well, it’s a castle, and thats always fun. And it’s guarded by blokes in ridiculously impractical hats.

Our guide said these guards are actual live British soldiers, who rotate in and out from their various soldiering jobs. Not many left, she commented sadly, since so many have died in America's war in Iraq.

Of course, we road all around on the London Underground for sightseeing. I took a couple of morning runs through Hyde Park and Regent's Park.

We visited the mythical offices of Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective, at 122b Baker Street.

We also took advantage of London’s cultural diversity to purchase black hair care products, which are not generally available in Singapore.

Oh, and I got my picture taken in an English phone-booth.

Of course, we did a bunch of other fun stuff too. Its too much to write about here, but I have pictures posted online in our flickr account.

Five Year Wedding Anniversary

noreply@blogger.com (Expat Eric) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 00:48:00 +0000

Last weekend we celebrated our 5-year wedding anniversary.

Here our "before" photo 5 years ago taken Theo's Restaurant:

We celebrated by leaving Singapore. Not quite. We were still in Singapore, but we left the main island and spent the weekend on Sentosa Island at The Sentosa Spa and Resort. (We've discovered that Asia hotels eagerly misapply the term "Resort" to intentionally exaggerate their amenities; fortunately The Sentosa was deserving of the label.)

Even though Sentosa Island is technically part of Singapore, it feels like leaving Singapore, because going to Sentosa gets you away from all the normal activity of the city. There's a bridge to the island and you can get across by car, taxi, or bus. They also have an express monorail, and even a 1.6 kilometer cable car to Sentosa from Singapore.

We had dinner back in Singapore at the OSO Restaurant.

Here is our "after" photo 5 years later taken at OSO Restaurant:

The restaurant is on Tanjong Pagar Road. This is in an interesting area of Singapore. Located just outside of Chinatown, it is mostly filled with karaoke lounges and girly bars with blacked-out windows downstairs and massage parlors upstairs. But these are interspersed lightly with some legitimate pubs and restaurants and about a dozen wedding shops. It’s a strangely appropriate mix.

Nike Human Race 10k

noreply@blogger.com (Expat Eric) — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 13:01:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Expat Eric) — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 01:44:00 +0000

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.

One Year Abroad

noreply@blogger.com (Expat Eric) — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 05:43:00 +0000

We were so busy last month that I forgot that July was our one-year anniversary living abroad.

Happy anniversary everyone!

I don’t have anything profound to say, I just wanted to mark the time.

Back From India

noreply@blogger.com (Expat Eric) — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 06:39:00 +0000

We just got back from visiting Mumbai, India. We didn’t get to see most of the things we were planning to visit, because they were having a late monsoon season, and a lot of the roads were flooded. Even getting to our hotel was a problem for the taxis and ubiquitous rickshaws.

Our friends told us that India only has two types of hotels, 5-star or 2-star, nothing in between. We also learned that all hotels, regardless of stars, are ridiculously overpriced in Mumbai.

Initially we stayed at the Executive Enclave hotel. This is a small hotel in the suburb of Bandra. Not from the 5-star variety. The Singaporeans would likely describe it as "very local."

The hotel is located across from a slum. The view from our window was the tops of tarps and corrugated sheetmetal of the shantytown. The rooms were dirty and small.

The hotel promotes itself as good central location and a convenient jumping-off point for seeing Bandra. Unfortunately, the monsoon kept us from venturing out, so we missed that benefit. But it did have another important benefit: the food was excellent. Being shut in by the rain, we ordered room service and enjoyed it quite a bit despite the conditions of the room.

After two nights at the Executive Enclave, we upgraded our next location to the Taj Lands End. A 5-star hotel; also overpriced. But paying way too much is somehow more palatable when your drinking water is safe, your room is dry, and you're sipping champagne in the club room, watching the storms roll in over the Arabian Sea.

The rain finally released us on the last two days of our stay. We ventured out into Bandra to do some sightseeing and shopping. Mostly we just needed to get outside and experience the crowds and chaos of the city.

We drove around in taxis without seatbelts and rickshaws with canvas flaps instead of doors.

Because of the monsoon, the city was extra crowded. Even the locals had been on lock-down because of the rain, so like us, they were now scrambling around the city making up for lost time.

Because of the traffic, we never made it to any of the touristy places, so we bring back no stories or photos from any big landmarks. Just lots of ordinary street scenes of some of the 16 million residents of Mumbai.

According to our taxi driver, nearly 60% of the city’s residents live in slums. We’ve traveled in Asia quite a bit now, but we were not prepared for widespread poverty and poor conditions in the city. Visiting India puts some perspective on the privileges of growing up in middle-class America. It also puts into perspective the conditions of the homeless-by-choice crowd back home in Santa Cruz.

Other than the monsoon, the other distinguishing events from our stay were the near daily bombings. The evening we arrived, there were 7 explosions in Bangalore. The next day, there were 17 more attacks in Ahmedabad. Two days later, the police thwarted another attack by uncovering and defusing 18 more bombs in Surat.

Despite the rain, the bombings, and the food-borne illness I suffered on the last day, leaving India was difficult.

Not figuratively. Literally.

Our flight was at 11:30 PM, but by 9:00 PM with 2 1/2 hours to spare, the hotel concierge was alarmed that we had not yet left.

I previously took a taxi to the domestic terminal to change our reservations (they couldn’t take my credit card over the phone), and it only took about 1/2 an hour. The international terminal was only a bit farther, so I figured we had plenty of time.

But I was wrong. Departing from the Mumbai airport was the worst airport experience I’ve ever had.

Like the city, the Mumbai airport is crowded and chaotic. It is poorly designed and unprepared for the capacity it serves. To make matters worse, it lacks any useful signs or directions.

We got to the airport on time, but we used up two hours waiting in confusing stretches of unmarked queues through dirty and sometimes completely unlighted corridors. When we got to our gate, there was no plane waiting. Instead, we boarded a bus that took us back the way we came -- past all the gates we previously walked by in the dark. They dropped us off in what looked like an airplane graveyard.

But things improved when we got in our plane, and the return trip was uneventful. When we first arrived in India we were fumigated in the plane -- a stewardesses walked up and down each isle spraying insecticide foggers in the air from each hand. Apparently this is required by their aviation transportation regulations.

They warned us, "you may wish to cover your eyes and mouth." Thankfully this insult was not repeated on our departure. They fogged us traveling to Mumbai but not out. Given the cleanliness of Singapore versus Mumbai, it would have made much more sense the other way around.

Fumigation aside, we do plan to go back to India when the monsoons and bombings are over.

(View as slideshow on www.flickr.com)

Cooking Class

noreply@blogger.com (Expat Eric) — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 09:09:00 +0000

We haven’t really cooked much since moving to Singapore. Its too easy to eat out every night. Even coming from Santa Cruz, where we lived close enough to walk downtown to Pacific Avenue every night, we still cooked and ate at home more often than we do now.

To combine the whole cooking and eating out experience, we’ve been taking cooking classes.

Yesterday morning we went with a friend, Eleenor to the Coriander Leaf restaurant cooking studio. Our teacher was the fantastic French Cuisine Chef, Anne Guegan-Blayo, who led us through the preparation of several seafood courses.

We started with a dish I thought would be an appetizer. It was prawn seviche, with tempura calamari, and Thai seafood salad. It included roasted tomato salsa on the side.

Deanna loves squid, so we paid special attention how to recognize fresh squid in the wet market, and how to clean and prep them. The recipe mixed chili flakes and white pepper into the tempura batter, which added a nice kick to the calamari. When dipped in the salsa, this made my favorite flavor on the plate. But this was no mere appetizer; it was a complete meal in itself, especially after several extra helpings of seafood salad, and, of course, the calamari.

We were already full when our second dish was ready, poached threadfin with sauce Americaine. The sauce started with whole crabs browned and flambéed with diced vegetables, and then strained & reduced to a rich dark sauce.

Chef Anne said the sauce was invented when some Americans arrived to a restaurant after the kitchen closed. Their cook threw together a sauce using whatever scraps of crab and lobster was leftover from the evening.

We started our sauce at 10:00 in the morning; and considering how long it took to make, I’m doubtful my tardy countrymen would have had the patience to stay around to savor it. But I’m glad the recipes took time to prepare, because we were eating too much for a casual Saturday morning. By the time this dish was done, I was afraid the endless servings of fish were going to become oppressive.

The main course that followed included two different fish dishes. A red snapper fillets, pan fried and served with asparagus and hollandaise sauce. And a Barramundi/Seabass, roasted whole and served with butter-toasted almonds. This was all incredibly rich, employing an alarming weight of butter. For our final course, we moved out of the kitchen and sat down at a large dining table to enjoy.

While we were eating, Chef Anne was preparing a final treat of fresh fruit fritters with spiced sugar. By now, we had been in class nearly 5 hours. Drowsy from so much rich food, I wasn’t paying attention, so I have no idea how the fritters were made.

We took home two full bellies and some insights from Chef Anne that we might try at home. I’ll be testing our new squid knowledge on our next shopping trip.

I Like Small Airlines

noreply@blogger.com (Expat Eric) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 21:35:00 +0000

On our last trip we flew on Air Aisa, a Malaysian airline based in Kuala Lumpur. There are two things I like about flying on small airlines. First, they generally use smaller airplanes, instead of giant large wide-body planes. Second, they generally fly out of smaller, regional airports rather than the giant hubs.

The reason I like smaller airplanes is because I like flying, and I like to feel the airplane in the air. Some people hate it, but I like to feel the air. I like to feel the takeoff and landing, the ascent and descent. I would compare it to drivers who like to feel the road. Large airplanes are like large cars - you can’t feel the road. When I fly in large airplanes I miss the feeling of flight.

The reason I like small airports is because they tend to have more personally and they don’t isolate you from the flying experience. Larger airports may be all dramatic architecture and everything, but from a passenger’s experience, they are all pretty much the exact same ticket queue and shopping mall inside.

Small airports don’t have long ticket queues or food courts. They don’t have huge crowds and labyrinthine terminals to navigate. Sometimes they don’t even have more than one or two gates. The arrival and departure schedule is simple: you can walk straight in and can see your plane on the runway. No shuttle bus or people mover to get you to your flight, it might be the only plane there.

I like walking straight onto the tarmac and then out to my plane--no skybridge. I like being able to see the whole plane from the ground.

There is something about being able to see the actual body of the plane, the engines, wings, landing gear, etc, that makes flying feel like flying. Big airports feel like you're just packing 400 people into a big bus.

Bungy Jump

noreply@blogger.com (Expat Eric) — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 05:28:00 +0000

This is an old video from 2007 in Queenstown, New Zealand. But I only just recently figured out how to copy DVDs onto my computer, so this is my first chance to share it. This was a 43 metre (141 foot) jump off the Kawarau Bridge.

When I watched the video, I noticed that the guy totally has to pry my right hand off the handhold. They tell you to jump straight out, directly away from the platform, but I was too scared to do anything other than just let myself tip forward and fall off.

The jump site is operated by AJ Hackett. They have about 4 bungy sites in the Queenstown area, and they say that the Kawarau Bridge is the world's first commercial bungy site.

Our Big Scuba Weekend in Borneo

noreply@blogger.com (Expat Eric) — Fri, 23 May 2008 09:30:00 +0000

After getting signed off as Open Water Divers by Planet Scuba last weekend, we decided to do a real dive trip. Some friends of ours were planning a dive trip to Borneo. We made arrangements to join them, but they had a family emergency and had to cancel and fly back to the States.

We had already booked our flights so we decided to go ahead with the trip anyway.

They had booked accommodations on Mabul Island through Borneo Divers Mabul Resort. Our friend, Sporty Sharon, recommend Sipadan Kapalai Dive Resort. I sent emails to both resorts and the Sipadan Kapalai Dive Resort wrote back first, so I booked with them.

I screwed up our flight to Borneo and ended up wasting a day traveling. First we drove from Singapore to the Johor Bahru airport in Malaysia. From there we flew to Kota Kinabalu in Malaysian Borneo. Then another flight to Tawau where we spent the night. The next morning we drove overland through palm plantations to the boat jetty where we finally caught a speedboat to the resort.

The resort was fantastic. It made the long trip well worthwhile. Last week we were complaining about the spartan accommodations in Mersing and Palau Aur. You'll hear no complaints this week. In fact the resort was so nice we nearly forgot last week's shortcomings.

We stayed in one of the chalets on stilts over the water. We had perfect views of the morning sunrise over the open ocean.

The resort provided 3 boat dives every day, with unlimited dives from their jetty. They also took care of all the heavy lifting and setting up and breaking down the equipment for each dive.

We ended up diving at three sites, Mandarin Valley, which is the site just off the resort's jetty, and Barracuda Point and South Point which are both off Sipadan Island.

The dives at Mandarin Valley were OK, but the dives off Sipadan were incredible. The sea life was unreal. For our first real dive, it couldn’t get any better. We saw turtles, sharks, barracuda, clownfish, so many things I can barely begin to describe. But you can see for yourself, we have two videos from our dive posted below.

The resort sent an underwater videographer to record our dives. Of course we bought the video--it was our first dive. But we hope to avoid the geeky side of diving, which apparently involves coercing all your buddies to watch your dive videos, in particular the video of the dive that they all just did. Our friend Sporty Sharon wonders, "Why would I want to see a video of the dive I just did?" Yea thats a fish, I just saw it in real life.

We have lots of pictures and videos from the trip. More than half the pictures are mine. But since my camera is only waterproof to 3 meters, most of the underwater pictures are from our videographer.

There are two videos. The first video is from our South Point dive. The second video is from our Barracuda Point dive. As you watch the videos you'll find its hard to recognize faces under water. The best way to find me in the water is from my red swim fins and that damn bald patch on the top of my head. That, and I'm frequently waiving at the camera. Deanna is wearing orange fins and a black swimcap on her head.

Location: Palau Sipadan
Dive Site: South Point
Max Depth: 25.6 meters
Bottom Time: 42 minutes

Location: Palau Sipadan
Dive Site: Barracuda Point
Max Depth: 24.1 meters
Bottom Time: 45 minutes

We can't wait to go diving again.