Ana, Bill, TD 4 and Invest 91...Move along, there's nothing to see here!

I'm having a very emotional time right now and I thought I'd share it on the blog (since I don't seem to be sharing much else here). There are a lot of tropical presences in and around the Gulf of Mexico right now threatening my poor, defenseless house. For any that do not know, my house was violated by Hurricane Ike last September. It took a lot of money, stress, anguish and elbow grease to get it back to *almost* new condtion. Thanks Family (and not so helpful contractor)! Now, as I sit on the other side of the world during one of the most uneventful hurricane seasons ever, the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico have eaten some spicy food and started churning out tropical disturbances. Well I say, "Go away pesky tropical waves, depressions, invests, storms, and especially HURRICANES! Move along Ana, Bill, TD 4, and Invest 91! My house is still hurricane insured, but there's no need to challenge me anymore. I won! You lost! Get on outta here. Drift up to Iceland or something like your buddy Bertha!"

Ooohhhmmm. Ooohhhmmm. Calming thoughts. Ok, I'm better now. Just please pray with me that none of these things comes on-shore with destructive force! I mean, focus on them not coming to shore in or around Houston, but you can pray for everyone on the coast if you like. Ooohhhmm. Ooohhhmmm.

Out and About in Singapore

I've been going through our pictures, trying to pick out ones to post on the blog that are a)clear, b)informative, c)interesting. I've found out that we are really, really bad photographers. I mean epically bad. Wow. I'm embarrassed. A friend of mine told me about this online photography class I can take for $75. I'm pretty sure I'm going to sign up tomorrow. Anyway, since you guys are all our friends and family and you pretty much have to love us, I will go ahead and share some more pics with you. No negative comments though, our egos are fragile right now.

Anyway, we've taken these pics while out and about in Singapore. We were talking the other day and we figured out that many of you may think that we're living in a hut in the middle of a jungle or something. If this is true, I blame us for not blogging more, and I blame you for not looking up Singapore on wikipedia. Shame on us all.

Here go the pics!

Majulah Singapura (Onward Singapore!)


The CBD (Central Business District) at Night
Took this pic at Beerfest 2009. We had a terrible, hot, and expensive time, but we got to hear some awful polka music that totally made up for it!


The Singapore Flyer
Largest ferris wheel in the world. (We haven't been on it yet. It's really tall and scary, and some people got stuck on it for 4 hours at Christmastime.)


Buildings on Orchard Rd. as seen across the President's golf course
Orchard Rd. is the famous shopping area in central Singapore.


While we're talking about the President, here's his house. I mean our house. Ah I messed that one up. Anyway he doesn't really live here but entertains and works here.


Gardens at the President's House
Gardens, with CBD behind, with the Singapore Flyer in the distance. This place is pretty small!


The next 2 pics were taken from a skygarden of one of our friend's buidings.

Random Skyline Pic in Southwest Singapore


Industrial Southwest Singapore
In the distance on the right is Jurong Island, where David works. There are a lot of chemical plants and refineries there. Up close is the Jurong industrial area. Behind that is a cargo dock area.


A Normal Street in Singapore


Landscape Crew
They have these guys all over the place keeping the City beautiful.


Condos Near River Valley Road
Normal condos in a nice area of Singapore with a school? in front.


That's all the pics I can stand to show anyone. We're working on taking more "walking around" pictures so hopefully there are more to come. Next post, I'll write a little about living in our deluxe apartment in the sky and post some pics of the area where we live.

We miss everyone at home and love you!
I'll leave you with the cutest picture ever taken...

Homesick? Yes.

I've been feeling pretty homesick lately, especially since David has been putting in a ton of hours at work. There is somewhat of a balance to that homesickness here, though, since Singapore has many things to offer that are similar to home. Thinking about this conflict, I decided to write a fun post listing some things that I have here and some things that I miss.

5 Things Singapore doesn't have that make me miss home (See how eloquent I am?)

1. Friends and family - Ok I don't want to get all shmoopy on here, but seriously, you guys are very important. We have some friends here from the US that we are hanging out with a lot (Ben, Heather, and Heath) and other friends that we are making along the way, but the distance to the others in our lives is a bit hard to take.
2. Wendy's - To be fair we saw a Wendy's while we were in Kuala Lumpur. We couldn't read any of the street signs or figure out where it was once we were out of the taxi, so it pretty much didn't count since we couldn't find it again.
3. My car!!! - Ok maybe not my old car, but a car that is mine to drive. I'm grooving on the public transport here, but it is seriously patronizing to get chauffeured around by David all the time. Plus he's a crazy driver in Singapore! (don't listen Mom)
4. Baseball - Don't give me that crap about baseball being boring. You know what's boring? Cricket. And F1 racing. And futbol and rugby and all these other silly sports. What? You say I missed Oswalt pitch the home opener? I know. I know. But I "watched" it on the espn play by play text updater on my iPhone. Joy.
5. My backyard - This one is really here for the MoMo. She does not like having to ride an elevator to do her business. She is not happy about going out where all the dogs in the condo go out. And she really can't figure out why I keep following her around with little baggies. And for the record, I do miss mowing the lawn and doing work outside in general. If I were to try to do that here 2 things would happen. 1) People would talk about the crazy American. 2) I would die of heat stroke.

5 Things in Singapore that make me feel at home (and so succinct!)

1. David and Molly - Of course having my hubby around makes me feel at home anywhere. And after months of worry and heartache, the Momo arrived in Singapore in January and got out of her 30 day long quarantine on Feb 18th. She makes our lives happy every day. Ok I know we need to have kids.
2. iPhone - We've both got(unlocked) iPhones when we got here, which means I get to carry around something that brings me close to home wherever I am - Country music. No sighs or rolling of eyes, please. I have other music in my collection, but there's something about some Brad Paisley that calms my soul.
3. The Mullet - I had to put this one in here. It seems as though many Indian men here haven't learned from this fashion disaster of redneck men in US in the 80s, and are sporting a hairstyle so similar to theirs that I have named it the Indian mullet. It makes me smile...and also to want to say "Git R Done" for some reason.
4. Subway - There's one around the corner. They have the same menu, except for some Asia only additions such as the tandoori chicken. And get this, it's cheaper here! And they toast everything that they can get their hands on. "Not toasted, I said, NOT toasted!"
5. Skype! - This is an amazing and free tool we use to video conference with everyone in the US! None of us can believe it's free, but we are supporting Logitech's webcam business more than we believed we ever would! We are on Skype as jacque.wicker, so if you have a webcam follow the link and give us a call!
   

So this wasn't the most serious and informative post ever, you say? I say you should be happy to have a post at all!!

No, don't be mad. Please come back I didn't mean it. I promise to have photo-loaded, data-rich posts in the future. For now, this is helping me miss home in a semi-productive way!