Year: 2007

We played with hair styling products today. Spiky!

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Scientific name: Cycas revoluta
Common name: Japanese cycas
Location: Singapore

Vince and I spent sometime today searching for hidden objects in an I Spy book. I would list this as one of my talents. I’m pretty good at finding something hidden or something different in a group of objects. I like puzzles in general and I can do them fairly quickly although I think Donald is better at them than I am. Why couldn’t my strength be something more useful like negotiating a better price on a car or public speaking or writing or even parallel parking? Hmmm, just give me a pile of buttons and I can find the two that match for you! Whoop-dee-doo.

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I couldn’t ID this plant.
Location: Singapore

We share the elevator lobby with three other apartments and everyone else has put up cute little Chinese New Year decorations in their doorway. I didn’t want to be a poor sport and I really want to celebrate this year, so I went to our local bakery and looked at the goodies and decorations they had in stock.

It’s the year of the pig!

I’ve been a discouraged about Edda recently. She’s making progress at her own pace, but it’s very, very slow. So slow and so tedious. Things are just so hard for her – going up stairs, telling us that she wants something – I usually am OK with it all and I think how lucky we are that we are together, it’s just that when I’m feeling blue it just seems so bleak. I didn’t write about it when I was feeling really badly a few days ago, I do feel much better now.

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Scientific name: Bauhinia
Common name: Orchid tree
Location: Singapore

Mom is one of them, lady for habitat humanity

While asleep, Edda overwhelmed her diaper and urine spilled out onto her PJs and the sheets. The kids room was getting musty in a disgusting kind of way and the overflowing diaper finally made us rip off the sheets and upturn the mattresses and turn off the air conditioners in the house and let everything air out. Why is the lampshade at the base of the lamp? Good question! We have no idea.

The house was in sad shape today, which made it a perfect day for a stranger (a guy estimating how much stuff there is to move back to the US) to come into the house and look in every single room and closet. Hooray for me and my stellar housekeeping abilities!

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I had to use a lifeline today for Icarus. I wasn’t really paying attention and my rows got shifted off by a stitch and everything got screwed up. I hate ripping out work, so I tried for a little while to see if I could fudge the stitches to make it look OK, but when you are off by one stitch in lace for most of a row, it just looks bad, bad, bad.

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Scientific name: Caryota mitis
Common name: Fishtail palm
Location: Singapore

I’m not a religious person, and yet I do hang out with some fairly religious people. I feel honored to call some of them my friends and even family, and like some family, their way of expressing that comes out in strange ways. It’s maybe not want you are expecting, but it’s touching at the same time.

2 examples from this weekend:

– Apparently, Nasreen’s mom thinks I should convert to Islam. At first when I heard Arif tell me this (on the way back from salsa), I was shocked. Nasreen’s mom is a very nice gentle lady – she doesn’t seem, to me anyways, of being one of those heavy handed religious people. I mean sure she’s religious, but she’s nice. Arif explained it to me that Nasreen’s mom, just likes me, and thinks I’m worthy of conversion, which makes total sense.

– Tonight, at the hottub, JT and Frank and I were talking – about girls of course, potentials and ex’s. JT made a comment, that he thought that God was looking out for him, and Frank, and (pause) even me. It was the first time that I’ve ever heard of JT referencing my “relationship” with God. He paused, because I think he knew he was going into unchartted territory, but I understood him. It was his way of accepting me within his own context. It moved me. We were in a fairly deep and revealing conversation, it’s probably the longest we’ve ever staying in the hotub for – 2hours and 40 minutes. (There’s another funny story from Sunday, that I don’t think I should blog about in a public forum, because there’s a slight possibility that people will find it and read it. I’ll post it on another private blog. If you need details, ahem… I’ll be happy to forward.)

Saturday night the Karims and I got dressed to the nines and went to Cafe Cocomo in the city. As forturne would have it Choon and PS and Lynn were all in the city programming and they came to join us. The funny thing was Cafe Cocomo has a dress code, so I ended up sorta breaking into Choon’s house to grab some shoes and pants for him. 🙂

We were there to introduce Nasreen to social dance, as a way to meet people. Also Arif and Tahera like going to the city because there are all these boring married people in Palo Alto. And I was there to meet folks too I would say. 🙂

Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever had more fun dancing than Saturday night. Usually I’m somewhat nervous stepping onto the dance floor – the pressure of leading, the pressure of is the woman having a fun time, the pressure of keeping the rhythm (because like Doris, I have none.) I like salsa in this regard, cause all the steps are on the beat. It’s very easy. Swing and triple stepping always seem to screw me up.

There was a beginners class at 8pm, and I actually met some nice people in class. When we initially choose partners, this one girl Amanda, immediately came up to me to be my partner. She seemed cool, and as it turns out was the gossip/entertainment for the night. 🙂 When the dance floor opened up, I wanted to ask her to dance because she was one of the cooler folks that I had danced with in the class. She made it really easy – no pressure to lead, just have fun, and if I messed up, just sorta laugh, freestyle and start up again. Also, laughing came easy for her. It seemed like she had a really easy going personality. Her sense of style wasn’t bad either. Not exactly pigtails, but two blonde braids that came down behind her head to shoulder length, and she wore a brown midthigh length cotton dress over jeans. And we had a good time.

By this time, I’m sure everyone sitting on the couch was elbowing each other. 😛 They said as much when I sat down after the song. Amanda, came by again later in the night before she left, to have her last dance with me, which was a lot of fun also. Afterwards, tho, everyone was grilling me on why I didn’t get her phone number. Reason – I’m stupid? I dunno. I’m just getting over the hump of dancing with random people. One thing at a time.

Anyways, after the dance, Arif mentioned that he knew exactly where she worked because Amanda had told him exaclty which school she worked at as a teacher. So of course, Google is quite useful in this regard, and I found her friendster page online. Hrm.. laff.

So I suppose everyone is egging me on at this point. Dunno what I’m going to do.

Jeremy is a fruit-a-holic. Every morning, he prepares a feast of cut fruit. He’s going to really miss the papayas and mangoes when we go back to the US.

For lunch, we went to McDonald’s to meet Ronald. Vince was excited. Edda was not. Do you see the signs hanging from the ceiling? They are advertising for their promotional prosperity burgers for the year of the pig! (the sandwiches are beef and chicken – no pork, because everything is halal.)

Then we went on our date. It was going to be a hike around Upper Pierce Reservoir, which it was, but we didn’t realize that the very short trail led to one of the best prata shops in all of Singapore.

Mmmmm. Jeremy got a banana chocolate prata with a kopi-chino (get it? a mix between a kopi o (a Singapore coffee) and a cappuccino (not a Singapore coffee)).

Yum! All done!

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Progress is being made on Icarus!

I’m about 20 rows away from completion. I don’t want to jinx myself, so I’m not going to predict how long the next 20 rows will take because I know very well, it could take me into next year.

Look at the little leaves forming in the lace. Pretty cool huh?

I haven’t seen many movies at our local mall. Usually they show Asian movies that are gory/supernatural (a la the Ring), kung-fu types (Jackie Chan), or love stories. Here’s an example of what’s coming up at the Lot 1 Shoppers Mall. Wonder twin powers activate!

This week I noticed that Babel was playing – I think it got nominated for a Best Movie Oscar. I was excited that such a movie made it all the way out to the boonies, so I slipped out this afternoon to go see it. It was a well done movie, much better than You, Me and Dupree, the last movie I saw at the theater and all the actors were fabulous and the filming was well done, but I walked out about 15 minutes away from the end because my stomach was churning and I wanted to heave my curry puff I had smuggled in and ate during the first 2 minutes of the previews. I just can’t deal with all the sad things happening, especially to people who weren’t adults yet. Shot at, getting left in the middle of the desert, watched mom jump to her death. Not a fun way to spend a few free hours. What was I thinking? I just can’t deal with such drama as entertainment.

On a lighter note, Vince was Edda’s therapist today.

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Scientific name: Cuphea hyssopifolia
Common name: Mexican heather
Location: Singapore

So that lunch happened a bit faster than I thought it would. Laff.

I got together with the guy I met last night at the happy hour, Joe. It was a good lunch. He’s a talkative guy. He actaully works down the street from where I live. We went off to eat at Banana Leaf – a staple for good malaysian food. It was super buys at lunch, and Joe actaully knows the manager. They were hugging and chatting. I think usually his connections get him in, but not today.

I hadn’t seen Joe in like 5 years, and while we were waiting, he actually bumped into some girl that he hadn’t seen in like 5 years. She was cute, dressed well – heels under some fancy jeans, highlighted hair. Pretty social. She small talked me a bit and got my age out of me. Found out she’s from MD and her sisters went to MIT. Sorry folks, don’t think she’s for me tho. How’s that for a build up? Hahah.

Joe and I had a good lunch. Talked a bit about his engagement which was a surprise whirlwind to hawaii to watch the sunset on xmas day. Also we talked quite a bit about strategizing to meet women, about happy hour partys and how you can host parties and such. Maybe not a bad idea. Also we talked a little shop about Java too. 🙂 I have to say, I guess software dev is messed up everywhere. Heh.