Meeting good friends in Singapore

I only had a few hours to spare after all the stressing and all the presenting. But a few hours was all I needed to catch up with some friends in Singapore. Good members of the international conspiracy

Enrique is the very dude who coined the phrase "21st century boheme".
Sam can't sleep.



Notice the number of beers. Yes! I'm completed my run on anti-biotics. This had to be celebrated with a beer in the company of good friends.

Return to Singapore

Time to present my the results of six months wort of spying.
I'm presenting to audiences here in Singapore and in Hong Kong on Thursday. It's exciting to be back, my stay here still ranks as one of the happier times in my life, even if it was only six weeks. But I'm still recovering from my tonsillitis so not allowing myself anything but enjoying some of the vistas I have missed.

For instance, the Simatec skyscrapers. Five of them all together around a massive (strange-looking) fountain of wealth. From above they supposedly look like the palm of a hand with five fingers.


The very reason for my happyness in Singapore- the food!
Oh how I love thee Singapore food court. I had all my favourites while here, including the Hainan chicken and Korean BBQ beef.
Not to mention the wonderfull half-boiled egg breakfast. Gwuarr!




Ok, this is really really geeky...
But I am a geek and I'm proud of it!
i've invested in a new ipod and a travel speaker. So as soon as I arrived at the hotel I was able to set up a small soundsystem next to my computer. It feels like the beginning of a new life, to finally be able to hear my wonderful music without having to plug my ears with dirty earphones. Music is important.

This pretty much completes my hardware setup to support a life of international espionage. All I need now is a portable printer.
Just the different chargers for all my hardware probably takes up at least 3 kilos in my luggage :-o

YES!! First enjoyable stay in Bangkok!!!

I had to leave Singapore, before falling to deep in love with the place. The last month was possibly the best time of my life. First I thought it was Singapore itself. Easy mistake to make: it's truly a magical place. The food, the cultural diversity, the harmony, the nightlife, the beaches, the weather, the jungles and the cityscapes... But it wasn't any of this that made it what it was- it was the magical friends I made. Satomi and Pia, I owe it all to you.

The last two weeks in Singapore (wow, I've not updated this blog for a while, have I) did not feature much touristing. So not much to write in this update. I did go to Sentosa, the artificial beach paradise built outside the coast of Singapore. Beach, a beach bar playing beach house music, beautiful women splashing around in the swimming pool and the sounds of the jungle at night... But no photos. It's a terrible thing to learn about yourself at the age of 26, that you are just not a natural photographer. I really need to make an effort to take photos.

And thats really the story of the last two weeks. No effort. Just enjoy the amazingness of everything, without trying too much to do anything but enjoy enjoy enjoy.

So, all good things have to end. I made a runner yesterday, packed my bags and headed to the airport. Spent last night on the streets of Bangkok, chatting with scandinavian adventurers and taking in the change in scenery. Bangkok is as chaotic as Singapore is harmonious. That's why I normally dislike this place, but now I must say it's a welcome change in pace. I'm lucky that it just so happened that Kym is in town. He's waiting for his visa to do a job in Saudi Arabia for a couple of months. Talk about a Detox!!! Thanks to him I was able to muster a bit of sightseeing today: I saw the massive, chaotic Chatuchak market- Bangkok's insane answer to Camden. I also had seabass in exotic Chinatown. All in all a very relaxed day and I'm feeling ready now to face the dark and dangerous world again after spending too long in paradise...




ADDED 11 March: Cheers in Bangkok












ADDED 11 March: Bangkok Chinatown

Frogs, Zen and opulent fans

I need to start carrying a notepad around so that I can write down where I've been. A taxi driver was kind enough to take me to the most amazing frog restaurant in Singapore, but I have no idea how to get back there. I've always been a fan the Sichuan frog dish, which is served on pebbles and with lots and lots of chili. The one I had on sunday was a local singaporean dish and definately pushed that one out first place, it was absolutely scrumptuous. After the meal I asked how much I'd eaten, and it turned out I'd consumed three whole suckers! I'm not sure why that feels so embarrasing.

Another great place I'd like to revisit was some marina in northern Singapore. Phil, my old friend from uni who I randomly bumped into here in Singapore, introduced me to wakeboarding. Unfortunately, at the time I thought I'd managed to loose my camera, so there's no pictorial proof (I've since then located my camera). That's a shame, because I actually managed to get up on the board and even learned the basics of swirving left and right. It was so ZEN, man! The whole secret of wakeboarding can be summarized in two tenets:
1. Don't try
2. Look cool

I mean, how ZEN isn't that. I'm planning to become a professional wakeboarder and then write a book called ZEN and wakeboarding. I've heard the one about zen and motorcycle maintenance sold pretty well, so I think there's a market out there.
But, so... yeah! ZEN. Whenever I tried anything, i would promptly fall into the water. And every time the instructure would drive the boat back to me and tell me: "Don't try". Just relax and look cool. And it was true. For instance, if I wanted to swirve to the right, through the waves made by the boat to get out on the right side of the boat, the secret lay in NOT looking at the difficult waves. Only by looking up into the distance and pretending there were no waves was I able to do it. Same thing with turning back into the wake of the boat. As soon as I looked down at the water and tried to figure out how to deal with the nasty waves, I'd fall right in. But if I pretended I was posing for a fashion shoot, looking out into the distance, even waving to people on the beach and saying: "ciao!" then there was no problem.

Also went to the night safari sunday night. By this time I had found my camera, but in order not to scare the animals, we couldn't use the flash, and so any attempt to take pictures (remember, this was the NIGHT safari) was pretty doomed.
But absolutely worth it. I'm becoming quite a fan of doing these tourist things. I mean, you've got to spend your day doing something, right? Instead of shopping or lazing about in a bookshop or reading the economist on your sofa at home, why not go to the Chinese Gardens? Take a cookery class? Or cycle through Ubin island? Even though I'm usually very very tired when i do these things, due to a rather demanding nightlife, it's kind of cool to spend that tiredness on weird tourist stuff.

My Autralian friend has finally made his blog public, open for all to see. Go check it out! Post lude adverts in his comments section! He's obviously going to get himself fired from his new job, from the sounds of it. great pics from the chinese new year celebrations in Australia. I was in Hong Kong and Singapore during the chinese new year, but somehow I missed it all.

But I do have pictures from Raffle's hotel. I met the same office geek there as last time (the guy in the cheap white, stripey shirt), but he's ok so that's cool. Pia (my german flatmate who you will know from blockbusters such as the German Girl Shrine on Ubin island) has her boyfriend visiting, so of course we had to introduce him, Andi, to the Singapore Sling. Invented in 1910 or maybe it was 1914, this is the source of this most sickly sweetish drink. I think you can tell from the colour it's not really intended for blokes. I'm hiding my beer as i'm taking this photo. And Andi took a loooooooooong time finishing his.
The second photo is of the fans in the ceiling of Long Bar, the bar where we had our slings. I just wanted to introduce you to the high class establishment version of a fan. yeah! opulance, baby, opulance!

Taxis and bohemes

I had the most BIZARRE taxi experience yesterday. Now, taxi drivers in Singapore are quite odd to begin with. For instance, you don't tip them, they tip you. That's right. If the fare is 5.20, you don't give them 5.50 (or the 7-8 you would be expected to give in California). No, if you were a decent passenger, they give you a 20 cent tip, thanks five will be enough. They also have very strange taxi meters that favour short trips over long ones. So when you get into a taxi, he'll get pissed off if you are going far.

Anyways, yesterday I had arranged to meet a friend down in Boat Quay. Immediately inside the taxi, I realized something was wrong. This driver was EVEN MORE unhappy about having a customer than usual. He was visibly upset about the idea of driving to BQ- I assumed this was because it was far and he felt he'd be loosing money. However, on the way there he explained to me that the problem wasn't the money but that he desperately needed to go to the toilet. What do you say to that? It seemed reasonable to offer him to stop on the way, but he decided to brave it. Throughout the journey he described exactly how desperate he was to go, and quite vividly how his stomach was feeling. Alas! About half a minute away from the agreed drop off place, he suddenly hits the breaks and shouts "out!". This man really needed to go. Of course I got out, trying to find the change to pay the man his fare. i did not have time though as he quickly drove up to a cafe nearby to run into the toilet. So I walked off to the meeting point, quite shaken. It is not known to man that a taxi driver forfeits his fare.

The friend in question is actually a friend of my American-Italian friend who's now building up a movie website in Rome. Check it out: www.35mm.it
My roman friend had put me in touch with his old schoolmate from France. Pretty confusing back-story, something like half-philipino, half-spanish, lived in UK/US, culturally french now living in Singapore kind of thing. Amazingly this man seemed to knowthe answer to the age-old mystery: "what is halfway between a back-packer and an expat?"
A boheme!

Sitting outside New Asia:


YAY! It's raining cats and dogs outside. I'm working from home today to let my creative juices flow freely. It's quite a feeling sitting by the balcony, overlooking suburbian streets lined with palm-trees and listening to the sound of tropical rain. Quality of life, that's what I call it.

Success, tourism and beaches

Ok, maybe I wasn't fair about the benefits of success. Taking a step outside of the familiar and not being run over by a bus teaches you condifence. It's quite a buzz.
I'm thinking about these kind of things right now. I'm in the middle of a self-discovery phase. Reading books about Zen buddhism, thinking about what I want out of life etc. Usually, you can get feel a bit frustrated or confused when you get too introspective. But I've discovered that if you combine it with touristing, it's actually quite pleasant. Yesterday (Saturday) I spent the afternoon walking through the Singapore botanic garden and then through the Chinatown next to the Central Business District.

ADDED PIC 17 February: I was in utter shock by what I found in the Botanic garden. Flowers everywhere. And so many of them were orchids they even called one part of the park "orchard gardens" and charged me $5 entry to see them all.


My Australian friend has pointed out the absurdity of the idea of a Chinatown in an ethnically chinese city. The neighbourhood is a left-over from the colonial times when the British segregated the immigrant working populations into ethnically defined sections. The chinese then took over the city, but the neighbourhood remained and lately they've realized that it can serve as a tourist attraction. It's a bit weird. It's actually mostly new houses, but built to be identical to the old houses they replace. So it's somewhere halfway between authenticity and Disneypark.

Among the most exciting things about my life here is that I can order in Mandarin! It's so exciting, and the people working in the shops are friendly and help me if I don't know a word. Today I ordered fish in black-bean sauce, TWO bowls of rice and some green tea. All in mandarin! Why does it matter that I ordered two bowls? Because you get one with your food. So when you want to have two, you ask them to "add one bowl". I think it's pretty cool to be able to say add in a foreign languange.

I ordered this particular dish in Ubin. Ubin is an island on the northern coast of Singapore. It's like being transported maybe 30, 50 years back. It's a reasonably big little island, it takes about 30-40 minutes to cycle from one end to the other. Yet there are only between 100-200 people living there. There's a genuine little village there that seems to live primarily on renting out bicycles to tourists. Someone claimed there was a beach on this island, and I spent a couple of hours cycling all over the island before realizing that someone had lied. However, it was an absolutely wonderful day, cycling through forests/jungles. I found a shrine dedicated to a German girl. She was a catholic German about 60 years ago that died falling off a cliff. Some buddhist monks found her and gave her a buddhist burial. Sometime since then she's gone from being a ghost that haunts the area to become a goddess in the Daoist religion. BIZARRE! Singaporeans travel to this island and offer her food and stuff, hoping to get her support. This was made even more bizarre by the fact that I was travelling this island with my german flatmate and some german friends of her.

Anyways, when we finally left the island, when we returned to the ferry terminal back on singapore island, we saw that just there next to the terminal was an excellent beach!!! So we did get a couple of hours lazing about in the end.

I'm also making some progress with my German and Japanese. Just hope I don't push my flatmates' patience too much. But here are some useful sentances:

Kareshi iru?
Watashi wa ima ie ni kaeru. Sonna ni tou kunai.
Uchi ni kitai?

Hast du einen Freund?
Ich gehe jetzt nach Hause. Es ist hier in die Nahe.
Moechtest du mitkommen?

Excellent!

Quick update

Tonight we've managed to get onto the guestlist for some bar that's going to be giving out free vodka. I only have time to say one thing: I went out partying with Phil last night. Yes, that's right, Phil! We used to know each other in the first year of university, and by pure coincidence we bumped into each other in Ikea in Singapore through a mutual friend. BIZARRE.

I meant never to post party pictures on this blog, but it's very difficult to find Phil in a non-party environment. Sorry.

Singapore #2

Wow!!!! I made it! I'm in Singapore! Exclamation mark exclamation mark exclamation mark. Ok, so maybe I'm a bit excited, but after the crisis last weekend with loosing my credit card, it's just so cool to have made it over here. I've found a room in an excellent flat just around the corner from shopping paradise/hell Orchard Road. I've developed a new passion: sleeping under a fan. It's so exotic, it really makes me feel like im in some kind of tropics... and it keeps the mosqitoes away.

Oh, and the food... The food... What is happening to me? When did food start to matter so much to me. Korean, different chinese provinces, malaysian, vietnamese, indian. Anything you can think of for two squids and it's excellent quality. So much food, so little time.

(Added PIC 17 Feb: This is the local breakfast set, which is now MY daily breakfast. Pistachio paste on the toast, half boiled eggs and some of the blackest coffee this side of paradise, with cream of course. Not sure how i'll survive without it if I ever leave.


I've managed to go out twice: once to Raffles Hotel for a Singapore Sling, and the second time to the great ladies night of Singapore. Ladies nights is every wednesday and means women drink for free. Some genious realized that lots of drunk women mean lots of men willing to pay. Thank god my two super sweet flatmates were able to slip me a couple of free drinks before I ruined myself.

(ADDED PIC 17 Feb: I don't know who the geek is, but that's Raffle's hotel in the background)