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!

Hapy New Year!!!

Hahahahahhaahahahahahahhahahahahahaha! You're so 2008.

Sorry about that. It's late and I'm delirious.

Anyway,

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

We celebrated the coming of the New Year by heading to Raffles City and having a nice dinner at a fusion type restaurant there, ending with a warm chocolate cake covered in fresh vanilla ice cream and strawberries. Yum. Then we walked all around the Raffles/Marina Bay area exploring and trying to find the right spot to see the fireworks over Marina Bay. David and I love fireworks, which is one reason why we got married the day before the 4th of July. Otherwise known as the 3rd of July. Hahahaha. I digress. We were reminded that even though there were 10s of thousands of people out celebrating near us, this is nowhere near as important as the Chinese New Year, which occurs later this month. There will be fireworks then as well, and 2 days off of work!

Here's a video that I took of the fireworks with our digital camera. Hopefully I will embed this correctly. :)



Comment and tell us what you are doing to celebrate the coming of the new, and hopefully more prosperous year!

New Place

Yeah yeah I know you haven't heard from us. Cut us some slack would ya? We have been very busy getting settled, working, trying to get Molly flown out here, and working with my parents on getting our house repaired from the hurricane damage in Houston. The days aren't any longer here in Singapore people! I am glad that we have a feature on our mobile phone plan that allows us to call the US on our normal minutes with no extra charges. That's right, I said mobile phone. Would you rather I call it a handphone? I didn't think so.

Anyway, the big news is that we have officially moved into our new and permanent place. We actually signed the lease Dec 13, but as we do not have all our stuff from the US yet including our bed, we opted to continue staying at the serviced apartment with a real bed and everything. But, the lease ran out on that place so we finalized the move to our new apartment yesterday, on Christmas Eve. We are so excited. It is a really nice place near to the Novena MRT in the area of Newton. There is a shopping center downstairs, then that place connects to another shopping center across the street via an underground tunnel that takes us to the Novena MRT, where I will catch the train every morning on my way to work.

Below are a ton of photos of our apartment that we took as we moved a few things in last week.

Front Door/Entryway with Shoe and Storage Cabinets

Living Room with Balcony Behind

Dining Room

Kitchen

Yard (And you didn't think we'd have a yard here)

Panic Room (Where I go to escape David)

Kitchen View

Hallway with Bedrooms on Left and Master at End

Office

Guest Bathroom

Master Bedroom

Master View

Pool from Master Balcony

Master Bathroom

David Arrives!!

Hey all! Sorry for not having any new posts for a while, I'll try to update more often. Now I have a lot of stories, photos and other things to share all waiting on me...

The best news is that David is finally here! He arrived Tuesday night at 12:30 am. Ok Wednesday morning - but pay attention to the story!

Here's him coming out of baggage claim - He looks tired, but he's my hubby and he's here!!

We checked into a new "serviced apartment" coming back from the airport. This one is recommended by David's company, and is much nicer than the one I've been staying in. David laughed when he saw my place the next day, and made me sad. The place we are staying in is 1 MRT stop north of the main shopping area of Orchard. Speaking of the MRT, here is a link to a good map of Singapore with the MRT lines and stops shown. The place we are in is right next to the Newton stop on the red (North-South) line, 4 stops from the south end of the line. The Orchard stop is on Orchard Road, which has the most shopping I've ever seen in my life. It is entirely dangerous.

The next day we spent the whole day running errands and making David legal. We went to the Ministry of Manpower. No Harry Potter fans, it's not like the Ministry of Magic. To be honest, in my head it is like the Ministry of Magic. Oh I wish. Anyway, we drop off all of David's identification then we have to leave and come back in 3 hours. David was a little bit nervous about the situation what with all the no way to prove his identity. I mean he could have been an illegal alien. Wouldn't that be funny for him to be deported from Singapore? He didn't think so, and he got pretty mad at me for talking about it. Are you surprised? Anyway, we came back at the scheduled time and POOF, there was his Employment Pass, also known as his green card. It was kind of like magic. It was!

Then I drove us down to the checkpoint for Jurong Island, which is where the plant is that he is working. They require a separate pass for entry onto the island and have some pretty hefty security, mostly starting up after 9/11. We got that all set up, which is good since David had to go to work the next day. Luckily, a guy from his work offered to drive him in on the first day.

Well I've got more to say, as always, but need to get to sleep pretty soon. I'll update again soon with some pictures of the amazing Christmas decorations here!

Adventures in Transportation

Before I got here, I read and heard a lot about transportation in Singapore. They have a very well developed public transportation system including MRTs (subways), LRT (light rail), buses and more. As a compliment to this transit system, personal cars are very expensive here, with a mid range compact car costing in the $40K range. Now, David's company is leasing a car for us to use, so I was and still am interested in seeing how much we use each type of available transportation. For now, I'm using mostly public transportation. Here is a picture of a normal MRT station:

I'm also using taxis when I'm running late, since it takes a while to use the public transportation what with all the walking and waiting, loading and unloading, more walking and waiting. You get the picture.

So that I could get used to driving here in Singapore, where they follow the British standard of driving on the wrongleft side of the road, and so that I would have a way to pick David up from the airport (next week!!!!), I rented a car through my company. It's a Toyota Altis, and from what I've seen it's a mid size car here.

Ha!!! Mid-size - shmid-size


What's Wrong with This Picture?


Even the blinker is on the wrong side, causing me to repeatedly and with no control turn on my windshield wipers. At least Singaporeans seem to have no need to laugh at foreigners so I'm the only one laughing. I think. Do you think they're laughing at me? I gotta go.

There is another form of transportation I will under no circumstances be attempting. One of the legs of it takes people from the mainland to the beach island Sentosa. Forgive the photo quality, it was taken with my iPhone and it was raining at the time.

I know Dad is with me when I say, "Yeah right!".

Ok I'm off to do some cross-stitching before bed. Hope all of you are having good mornings and evenings...