Travel Time Again!

Last Thursday, Marcus went to Houston... he got back Sunday and has "nothing interesting to say" He arrived home safe and sound after getting to visit Brent at Rice for the SAPS conference.

He didn't post.

Tomorrow afternoon, I leave for Montana to see an old friend that I have not seen in...hrmm lets say its been a while. I will post pictures and things as I can. The photos might end up on facebook with the travel journal uploading (RSS) so that people who see Facebook can keep up with me and my adventures.

Michael is doing pretty well making the adjustments to Power Middle School. He has come SOOO far this summer in emotional growth. There are still things that upset him (losing a bionicle piece for example) but the meltdowns are fewer and I haven't been called to the school yet. His only real problem thus far is adjusting to the workload and keeping track of his homework.

I will have the net book with me... so I will be able to keep up with things pretty well. I wish you all well and good night. More to this blog tomorrow or thursday.

Sunday night, and ready to head home

We finished up class today. Six group presentations, plus some last points to cover in lecture. It was a good group of students, and I enjoyed getting to know them a little bit. I hope I was able to pass along some worthwhile things to them.

Yesterday was also an all-day class, and of course there was also class on Friday night. So I haven't done much for the last couple of days. I did go out with one of the students last night, to a place called Holland Village, which is a shopping and dining area. We had some excellent food, including the Singaporean classic Chili Crab, as well as stir fried green beans with prawns, a very tasty fish that I don't know what it was (but it had a nasty looking head and lots of sharp, pointy teeth), some vegetables of different types... a few other things I think, as well. I was more than a little stuffed when I got back to the hotel.

My flight is tomorrow morning at 5:40am, which means I need to be at the airport at 3:40am, which means I need to leave the hotel at a little after 3:00am, which means I probably need to be up around 2:00am. I'm not real keen on that idea, but I'll certainly be able to get some sleep on the way to Tokyo. I have a very short layover in Tokyo, and then home to Detroit. I am supposed to arrive at DTW sometime around 1:30pm. I am looking forward to seeing Michael and hearing all about his week at Boy Scout camp (he earned his Tot'n Chip, and his Astronomy merit badge, I think, as well as his swimming certification). I also can't wait to see Heather and hear all about what's been going on at home, and just spend some time hanging out with the family.

Thanks for the interest, to whoever happens to read this. Not sure when it will next be updated, but I am sure some new adventure will come up before too long.

Chinatown

This afternoon I got out and about in Chinatown. It's a really interesting part of Singapore, and includes a wide range of diversity in the ethnic Chinese population. For example, on my walkabout today, I went to mosques, Buddhist temples, and Hindu temples, and while eating lunch, a group of Chinese elementary age students came by, separated apparently by grade with shirts that said Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (probably 1st-4th grade). The range of foods available in Chinatown was also immense, with Cantonese, Hakka, Teochew, Hokkien, and Hainanese food types all available. There were also tailors galore, several shops to cut chops (Chinese stamps of one's name, carved into a stone stamp) all of which had the best carver in Singapore, and a wide range of "medical halls" -- shops where you can get traditional Chinese medicine and herbs. You can see the dried lizards in the photo -- I have no idea what they are used for, but they're pretty cheap if you need one.

The walking tour that I took today started with the Sri Mariamman Hindu temple. The temple was under renovation, so I didn't get to see as much as one normally might, but it was really interesting. This temple is best known for their annual festival in October or November where adherents show their faith by walking on burning hot coals.

From there, I wandered on to the Sin Chor Kung

Temple, the Al-Abrar Mosque, and then to the Thian Hock Keng Temple, which was pretty impressive. It is the oldest Chinese temple in Singapore. I spent some time looking at the ancestor tablets -- similar to tombstones, except that the spirit of the person is believed to reside within the tablet -- as well as at the dragons on the roof, and the furnace where paper money and other paper items (like paper replicas of cars, or Coke cans) are burned to allow the items to reach the dead, who will make use of them. The temple has been around since 1839, and it remains impressive.

The walk through Chinatown gave lots of opportunity to see the style of homes in the area -- row houses, essentially, but the architecture and the design/coloration being distinctly Chinese, and well-cared-for. The Night Market area is a bit chaotic, but it is clean and well-regulated, and was certainly worth the visit. From most portions of Chinatown, you can see the metropolital skyline, so that you have the mix of the traditional and the modern together.

Today was a HOT day, and so when I sat down to have some lunch at a Hakka (Taiwanese) street restaurant (I had duck and noodles), and the waitress suggested a Tiger beer, I was happy to have it. The beer was so cold and the humidity high enough that when she poured it, it froze for a few seconds. It was certainly good on such a hot day.

Tonight is an open house for people interested in the Baruch programs, and I absolutely have to clean up before going there. So I'll get a shower and a shave and iron something to wear. Then tomorrow night starts my last batch of classes -- Friday night, then Saturday, and Sunday, and then home!

Little India

I took a nice walking tour through the Little India sectino of town today. It was designed to take you to the major sights in the area, and it was a nice day to be out and about. There were a ton of shops, selling fresh fruit, trinkets, clothes, food... you name it. I am surprised so many shops selling the same things can survive in such a confined space.

The first major stop was the Abdul Gaffoor Mosque, which is about 100 years old, and which is described as "an architechtural explosion of styles -- Southern Indian and Moorish". I remembered to wear jeans today, so I was at least able to get into the mosque and look around today.

The mosque's visiting hours were not for a little while, so I stopped in for lunch at one

of the local street-front restaurants. I ordered the Chicken Biryani set, which is several rice-b

ased dishes with spices. According to Wikipedia, "The spices and condiments used in biryani may include but are not limited to: ghee, peas, beans, cumin,cloves, cardamom, cinnamon, bay leaves

, coriander and mint leaves, ginger, onions, and garlic." They also say that the premium versions

include saffron, but I am pretty sure that this place was not serving "premium" anything. The food was

really good, though, and I enjoyed just sitting and watching the people go by as I ate.

From there, I walked on to the Church of the True Light, which is a more recent construction, and apparently very charismatic. The church and mosque are not quite right across the street from each other, but they are no more than a 1-2 minute walk, and they seem to co-exist peacefully.

From there, I strolled up to Dickson Street, and then up to the Sri Veeramakaliamman Hindu Temple. Also of recent construction, it is nonetheless a pretty impressive design.

I did pick up one very important thing while I was in Little India -- a package of Oreos. Mmmmmmmm...

No eclipse for me

Well, you might have seen some of the footage of the total eclipse that occurred today in parts of Asia. There are such strong superstitions in China about eclipses that the government there went to great lengths to explain the phenomenon, and to prevent accidents by turning on the street lights, etc. It was the longest total eclipse that will happen in this century, and people were really excited about it. Unfortunately, here in Singapore there was only going to be a 6% eclipse -- almost unnoticeable -- and then it was totally overcast here, as well, so for this part of Asia, at least, the eclipse was pretty much a non-event.

She was a fish-monger, and sure t'was no wonder...

Well, unfortunately, the live music (listed online as going Tuesday to Friday) was not around this evening at Molly Malone's, but I did have a nice Kilkenny lager, and a surprisingly good steak sandwich. Here's Molly, outside the pub. The pub was originally built in Ireland, and was then taken apart and transported to Singapore. (Given the number of "originally built in Ireland" pubs around the world, one might be surprised there are pubs still left in Ireland, but then again, they started with quite a few.)

One thing I don't understand, though. A person who takes something from a store without paying for it -- everyone, including the person who does it, recognizes that that person is a criminal. But the person who creates elaborate tax dodges by keeping money in off-shore accounts, and who manages to secure passports from multiple countries by circumventing those nations' rules -- that person thinks of himself as clever, rather than as a criminal. What prompts

this observation? A conversation I couldn't help but listen to, since the two gentlemen (one American, one British) were speaking loudly next to me. They were so self-satisfied with their various schemes to keep what seemed to be large sums of money out of the hands of their respective governments. Both men recognized that, if they were caught, there would be "hell to pay", so they knew what they were doing is illegal. But they were also quite confident that they had managed to set up schemes that would not be uncovered. I mean, I believe in taking every deduction to which one is entitled -- pay what you owe, but no more. But I don't believe in creating a false identity as a Filipino woman living in Hong Kong so that you can divert hundreds of thousands of dollars there to avoid paying taxes.

But enough of that. After having dinner, I went and sat on Boat Quay for a while, on the Singapore River. It was really active and lively -- a TON of restaurants and bars, and then just some open places to sit and relax. There are boats -- water buses, essentially -- that you can take to get over to Clark Quay, and you can see a couple of them here. It was really nice to sit out in the evening, though when I saw a river rat running on the steps, I did draw my feet in a little closer to me.

To get to Boat Quay, and to a lot of other places here, I've been taking the subway, or MRT. It is very efficient, and clean, and easy to use. The minimum fare for a trip is S$2, but you get S$1 back when you return your ticket card, so functionally it is only S$1, which is about 68 cents US. You can get just about anywhere you need to go on the MRT, and I much prefer the independence of going on my own to having to rely on a taxicab.

I stopped in at the Plaza Singapura on the way back to the hotel, and had myself a little ice cream. It was nice to cool off a bit -- it is pretty humid here. I had cleaned up a bit before going out, and still very quickly found myself to be a bit pungent from the heat and humidity, so a little air conditioning and a little ice cream was quite welcomed. And then I came back to the room, and turned on the television. There are not all that many English-language stations here at the hotel, and at the moment, two stations are showing a "save the elephant" show, one is doing "save the turtles", and one is "save the rhinos" -- all narrated by John Hannah (from "Four Weddings and a Funeral", among other things. I've seen each of these shows on at least half a dozen different times already this trip. So... please... don't eat turtle meat, and don't purchase rhino horn or ivory. John Hannah will be happier, and it's the right thing to do.

A work day

I went to the main office for Baruch today, to find out details about the one-day seminar they had asked me to do. I had been asked to do a full-day seminar on employee motivation during economic hard times, and had the seminar almost all put together. Baruch in Singapore is starting to do these seminars to help increase the awareness of the program among managers in the city. I was stopping in just to find out where to go Thursday morning, and how many people I should be planning for.

Well, apparently there was some miscommunication -- they had been waiting for some information from me that I was not aware they needed, and so consequently there had never been any publicity about the seminar, and so there will be no seminar. This was the first I had heard of any problem. It's a little frustrating, because I had made decisions about travel and activities while I am here based on the assumption that I needed to be ready to go for Thursday morning. I agreed to do an open house on Thursday evening because I knew I'd be around during the day on Thursday. Now, though, I don't teach again until Friday evening, and I might have not done the open house and had more leeway to travel a bit. So I am a little frustrated (not to mention that I'm out the money I would have earned for doing the seminar). As I said to Heather, grrrrrr.

So I wasn't in much mood to go exploring today, so I stayed in the room and got some work done. I'll have more time than I had planned to go exploring in the city, so it was ok to just hang here for a while. But now I am ready to head out, and I think that I'll head down to Boat Quay, and do something very Singaporean -- go to Molly Malone's, the oldest Irish Pub in Singapore. Should be a fun place to hang out, have dinner, and enjoy the evening. I'll let you know how it goes!