Year: 2007

I’m getting excited about moving. So excited that I can’t sleep at night. Maybe I should take one of those melatonin I’ve been giving Edda.

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Scientific name: Adenium obesum
Common name: Desert Rose
Location: Singapore

It was a good night. I enjoyed myself. I made a pact with myself that I would actaully go out there and ask some random people to dance. It was fine, tho I stayed away from the really good dancers and/or the smokin’ hot ones. Ha!

Mike, Betty, Pei-Yean, & Pei-Sun showed up. Pei-Sun got jacked since they wouldn’t let her stand around and watch, so she had to pay $15 to take the beginning lesson with Pei-Yean and Mike. The funny thing is that thru the whole beginning class, Mike was like “I know you and you know me” to Pei-Sun, since they had met climbing. But I guess Pei-Sun couldn’t quite place Mike until after the class had ended – basically a hour later! Laff.

Pei-Yean did alright. They didn’t get to lindy hopping in the beginning class, but I danced with her a little bit east coast style, and it was fun. At least I had fun. 😛

While everyone was in the beginning class, I was looking on to the advanced class that did a bunch of footwork styling for the swing out. It was interesting.. I’ll have to practice some of that. Choon, I think you would have enjoyed that class.

One of the aunties at Edda’s school who participated in the durian feast surprised me with a gift of mangosteens. The red part is the peel and you eat the white wedges. I like mangosteens, they are sweet and citrus-y.

Durian is referred to as the “king of fruits” and mangosteens are the “queen of fruits”. You are suppose to eat them together because durians are heat-y and mangosteens are cooling and thus cancel each other out. Kind of like when you counter the bag of Doritos with a diet Coke. It’s like you ate nothing at all!

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Scientific name: Lantana
Location: Taiwan

Grrr… we are getting on each others nerves today. I hope tomorrow is better. Good night!

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Scientific name: Russelia equisetifolia
Common name: Coral Plant, Firecracker Plant
Location: Singapore

Article

In honor of World Shutdown Day, Jeremy and I removed our permanently bent fingertips from our laptop keyboards for a full 24 hours and went out and did some “real life” living – so no blog post yesterday. Thankfully, we used the time to relearn how to talk to each other using our mouths instead of IMing each other from across the room.

Edda had her birthday party at her school today. She fell asleep during the first part, but perked up when the cake appeared.

There were 6 birthdays in Edda’s and Vince’s class this month and thank goodness we are through with all of them. I’m am totally birthday-ed out – no more wrapping of gifts or eating of delicious cake at 10 in the morning.

I also made good on my promise to eat durian before I left Singapore. Durian is a tropical fruit that smells totally disgusting – it’s not allowed in public buildings or on the subway, but many people swear it’s their favorite thing in the world. I’ve smelled it many times, but I’ve never tasted it. Someone said it’s like a taste of heaven in the middle of an open sewer. Some of Edda’s teachers said that they looooooooovvvvvveee durian, so last night I went to the neighborhood durian stand and asked the uncle for the most expensive one. I spent $15S on a 1.5 kilo durian.

I brought it home and Jeremy wouldn’t allow it in the house. It spent the night suspended on a bicycle handlebar on the patio. By morning, our patio (which is open air) did smell like an open sewer.

After Edda’s birthday party, Jeremy and the kids high-tailed it to McDonald’s and we gathered a bunch of teachers (outside near the playground) – including the principal and the vice principal to gather around and eat a lobe of this fruit.

So what does it taste like? Really, really awful. Terrible. It’s creamy and nutty and caramel-ly and also kind of seaweed-y. All this while smelling incredibly awful, but people around me were complementing the wonderful aroma. I could really only eat one bite, and the rest I gave to all the folks around me who were in ecstasy. They kept trying to get me to eat more because they felt like they were being too greedy with their portions. No thank you! Really, you can have the rest!

Then you are suppose to drink saltwater from the rind to get rid of the heaty-ness. Whatever that is. You can’t get too heaty around here.

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Scientific name: Samanea saman
Common name: Rain Tree
Location: Singapore

Well. I suppose it’s official that I’ve made my first friend off of match.com. Woo hoo! Excellent. Those of you who rock climb or salsa will possibly meet her in the near future. 🙂

It was a good weekend. Everyone took me out to Go-Kart racing on Saturday. Thanks Tahera for organizing. It was her first evite ever! Later on in the evening, Mike and Dung and Ray took me out to shoot my first ever 9 hole round of real golf. Gawd damn it’s a lot harder than it looks. It was an all par 3 course, and my first few scores were 8,7,7,6 I think. Tho I did make this beautiful tee shot on the 9th hole. Right on the green about 8 ft from the pin. The cool thing was that the green was surrounded by water on 2 sides.

Sunday morning I rode 60 miles. It hurt.

Also dinner tonight hosted by Yi-Ling and her newly remodeled kitchen. It was fun as the topic was of course, dating, guys, eHarmony, match and various stuff. It seemed that the women did all the talking, and the guys listened. 😛

Here’s a pic of Arif hanging at his place Friday afternoon, post milkshake eating. Pre REI shopping.

Keep on scooter-ing!

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Scientific name: Callistemon viminalis
Common name: Weeping bottlebrush
Location: Singapore

Jeremy is in the midst of giving up coffee. Please forgive him if he seems a bit short tempered.

I’m in the middle of reading a thriller! I used to not like these books because they freaked me out so much with all the shooting and suspense, but now I love them because (unlike real life) the bad guy always pays the price, the good guy gets the girl and all loose ends are tied up neatly – all within 300 pages. But I still can only read it while it’s light outside or while someone is in the same room as me.

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Scientific name: Brugmansia
Common name: Angel’s Trumpets
Location: Taiwan

I read Frank’s blog, cause he actaully posts some interesting material. On this one particular post, Frank links to a pretty interesting article about how a study of suicide bombers found that they were not the poorest of poor, and somewhat more educated than average, which runs a bit counter to my original thinking…

It was all good, until I read the first comment on the post. That royally pissed me off! Considering that the topic was economics and not religion. It still rankles me 4 days after the fact. You can read my response to that post from the link.

Out of respect to Frank, since it’s his blog, I’ve refrained from adding anymore comments, and I hope people will respect that wish as well. I’ll leave you with 2 links, and a response from Arif…

The Washington Post asks some panelists why people kill each other? Why do racial groups and ethnicities fight each other?

Response 1 and Response 2

Arif’s response (tho I think he uses a bit too strong of wording in the first paragraph)….

I am a Muslim and I agree with and thank my good friend that people need to be more considerate of Islam and Muslims and their relationship to (or lack thereof) to terrorism. Those that do not just show how ignorant they can be. And of course it’s not entirely their fault when the media serves to perpetuate and glorify that ignorance. But it is not sufficient to just blame the media. Those that are ignorant should either educate themselves on the issues or shut up and save some face for themselves and those they embarrassingly represent.

People have made fun of this 72 virgin thing a lot and its motivation to terrorism. You have to get to heaven first before you get that and there nothing in Islamic teachings that says blowing yourself up (suicide) when you take out a bunch of other innocent lives (murder) will land you in heaven. Now the 72 virgins thing, is a contextual thing and likely figurative, but who really knows with religion… there are probably analogues of what rewards heaven brings in Christianity and Judaism, but in the end it the specifics do no matter, as long as those who believe are given some higher motivation to do what believers are supposed to do… be good righteous people according to the contexts of their belief system.

It’s true that most of the terrorism incidents we hear about these days involve Muslims, but it’s important to distinguish between politics and religion. Though Islam itself does bring the two together in certain cases, the manipulations certain people will make of their actions and followers to bring a greater cause to their political agendas do not necessarily mean that a religious belief system actually condones the actions under whose banner they fly. You want other examples of terrorism? The Crusades by the terrorist “Christians” against a flourishing Islamic society. The IRA in the 80’s in Northern Ireland. The Revolutionaries against the British Rule in the colonies. The Sandinistas. The Christian Right when they attack abortion clinics and murdered doctors performing them. Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of an FBI building. You get the picture. I don’t mean to point my finger to Christians per se, but those who wage terrorism under that label, hence the quotes. Obviously Christ preached a message that was the opposite of what those that fight under his name would use as their justification. Terrorists are terrorists, whether they call themselves Muslims, Christians, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus, whatever. The former is a means, an action, while the former is a label used for a belief system. Because a terrorist labels themselves as such does not necessarily mean they are exemplars of the belief system.

Terrorism is a poor man’s war (though according to the article not literally poor), ie those that do not have the means or power support base to wage a full scale war on a sovereign but feel strongly about their ideology or political agenda. And it encompasses many different groups and many different motivations. There is no more legitimacy to a national war on the scale the US wages directly or indirectly than there is to terrorism, that a non sovereign group wages.

As to the concept Jihad that terrorist often ascribe their actions to, I think the vast majority of Muslims would and should believe that our true Jihad as Muslims is against those like Osama that threaten to bastardize and hijack our religion into a tool for their agenda. Jihad in a true Islamic sense is 1. the internal struggle within yourself to be the best practicing and believing Muslim you can be, 2. the defense of your personal body and that of all others around you from harm of an attacker, and 3. the defense of the religion and its ideology from those who seek to destroy or harm it. Nothing in there legitimizes killing innocents for your cause religious or not.