Apparently I caused some consternation with my last post. Please allow me to assure you that the plan is still to be in the States by the autumn. There is always uncertainty in the world, you just have to try to plan around it the best you can. While I would personally love to be in Singapore for a longer period of time, there is also a desire to get back home, to the base, to the life we led yelling our brains out for the Timbers, Thorns and Blazers, to climbing up steep ravines carved out by a raging glacial river millions of years before we were born. To the friends waiting our return, to the challenges of the next stage of our lives.
With just a few months left here in the Lion City, though, I find myself wanting to take in as much as I can, even the mundane. Especially the mundane, perhaps. Life in Singapore has become just ‘life’ and much like we did when faced with our pending departure, the urge to just sample as much of the Little Red Dot as possible is strong.
There’s a lot to take in. National Day is early next month. The F1 race should be right before we move back. Emma and I have talked about going to Har Par Villa for weeks now1when we doing this?. The newly opened National Gallery awaits, as does the Jurong Bird Park2though I have my reservations about that one, plus I’ve heard its closing up soon?. There is no end to the street food and Michelle and I have to set a date for me to go sampling durian3this is happening, oh gods.
Yesterday, needing to buy new flip flops4I mourn the amazing sandals I bought in Ubud for like $10, and knowing that the odds were not in my favor of finding my size, I went to VivoCity. I’ve written of this place often — I’ve become rather fond of the mall and its food options — and on the weekends, there’s usually something cool going on. This weekend was no exception; there was a science exhibit all over the mall for kids, including two myth-busters inspired gents on stage being funny and smart at the same time. I thought of my nephew and how much he’d like it, including the huge life-size Hulk you see attached to this post. I sent that picture back to my parents with the caption, “I ain’t afraid of no Hulk”5guess what movie I wanna go see/folks I wanna call.
Says Jackson; “We’ll see.”
Oh yeah, and there’ll be karaoke as well.
The last two times I’ve been to karaoke, Mr. Stevie Wonder has been given his due, and also, more likely, brutalized by yours truly tearing apart “Superstition”. The last time, Nabila confessed that she had never heard of Stevie. I took that personally; they play endless repeats of American pop music — usually stuff that’s a bit dated by a year or two, Emma and I often laugh about what we hear on the radio — but something like Stevie Wonder goes unknown?
Well, I, a bit drunk and feeling as if I owed it to the room as the sole American to defend one our national treasures of music, stepped up to the mike and belted it out.
Like the man said, “Do you like American music? I like American music. Ain’t no other music in my soul.”
A growing thought of a golf-themed recap of our eighteen months here has been present for several months. Treating each month starting with April ’15 as a hole, assigning a par to it and then recapping our performance compared to par. It’s something I’ll be working on I think with more vigor as we come into the aptly named “home stretch”. I’ll be curious how we score, and I hope that it’ll be better than the 102 that I normally post up after 18.
Full disclosure: I didn’t write down a single score last week. But hey, two pars!
My thought on the project is that each month would have an entry like such;
Hole #1: April 2015 – Yardage: 567 – Par: 5 – Handicap: 1
A vicious dog-leg immediately off the tee, the first month/hole requires some ingenuity and a lot of patience. Some players opt to hit from the black tees simply to give themselves more room to adjust to the sharp curves this hole throws at them. Traps abound along the fairway and the green is a fast, sloping affair. This is by far the hardest hole on the course, but many players list it as their favorite as the challenges are unique to each player.
Josh: 9
Josh struggled on this hole, finding the traps early and often. Though he shot a double-bogey, a two-stroke penalty was assessed for the out-of-bounds “Fifty Dollar Dash”. Work on the green was good, however, closing up with “After the Rains Come”, one of his better early performances.
Beverly: 8
Opting for an unconventional approach by playing from the black tees by going to China, Vietnam and Indonesia early on, Beverly found that the long month after the bend required more work than originally thought. The traps of not finding what dim sum was in stock led to a frustrating approach, giving her a triple on the first month.
Okay maybe that looks like our normal scorecards. We’ll see how this works as I comb through memory and monthly archive alike.
Well I’ll fall a bit short of a thousand words today. This past week wasn’t the most exciting, however, Beverly did do a triathlon yesterday — that’s freaking amazing, really. The weather lately has been wet and rainy and thus a bit cooler6lol, but during the 10k run, Bev did say she hit the wall. But she finished, which is amazing. She’s been hitting the fitness hard over the last few months and it’s really paying off. Girl is fierce looking now.
Apologies for the brief entry!
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