So as I look back on this week I find that it was full of ups and downs. Each time there was a high, inevitably a low was soon to follow. So for this week's blog entry I have arranged it with good news and bad news. For each situation I will reveal the good and bad news, than explain in more detail what was happening. So here we go:
Good News: I found a church and went to it.
Bad News: I was a little late and by the time I got there the service had ended.
I missed the service by a few minutes. Some of the peopl were leaving while most remained behind for refrechments. I debated staying and meeting some people, but I decided that would be a little akward and it might appear that I had only showed up for the food. However the coffee smelled like home and reminded me of the corner of fifth and jackson. I almost expected Jack McMillen to call me over and teach him something over some coffee. So I think I will like that church and will wake up a little earlier next week.
Good News: I went rollerblading around a park on the east side of the island
Bad News: I was not wearing sunscreen and the back of neck is red.
Danielle, Michele and I went to a nice little park called Pasir Ris on the east coast. We rented rollerbaldes and skated around for an hour and a half to explore the area. While there we saw a water park that we decided to go to before we leave Singapore. So although the rollerblades made my feet hurt, and left with a blister, the trip was a nice afternoon.
Good News: I experienced watching a soccer match on TV with people that cared about it.
Bad News: The game was so close that a bar fight broke out.
There was a huge game on the other day with Manchester United versus Arsenal. The two top teams in the league. So I went down to Hall 8's common room to watch it with Sascha (Manchester is his favorite team). I joined about 30 other guys in a small room to shout and yell and cheer. The atmosphere was like the superbowl. Anyway, the game was close and Arsenal scored a goal in the 94th minute to win the game. It was great fun. Oh, and I was just kidding about the bar fight... that would have been good news.
Good News: I switched out of chinese class and into Film in Asia
Bad News: It conflicts with another class so I cant take that either.
So now I found a leadership communication class that Juio is in and he likes it. It fits y schedule so I sent in the paper work today. Hopefully I will know for sure by the end of this week.
Good News: I booked all my flights for spring our spring recess trip
Bad News: Because I stayed up all night I slept through my first class the next day.
Our trip plans are all set. We are going to Bangkok, then to Chaing Mai in Northern Thailand. Taking a train and seeing other sights on our way back down to Bangkok. Then we are flying to the capital of Cambodia to take a bus to the temple city. Spending a few days at Angkor Wat and then flying back to S'pore. It should be loads of fun and I will post more details as we plan. And the class was my web design class, so I should not have any problems making it up.
Well, that about sums up my week, as a side note my belt broke. It didnt have any good news to go with it. But it broke anyway. It was such a good belt. Revearsable. I have had it for almost three years now.
Untill Next Time!
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Report 3: Today's Lesson's
Today I learned a few things about my new enviournment. Here they are.
Lesson 1, Prata is the new D.P. Dough
Most of you know about that heavenly place where droplets of wonderful are created. That little shop near the corner in downtown Ithaca that produces delightful treats that fill the stomache and warm the heart. Well there is a new calzone in town. They are called pratas. I was introduced to them a few days ago and loved them. They are like tortilla almost, but thinner. It is an Indian food that you can find at almost any hooku. Those are like food courts only outside, ussually in residential areas, but they are great for eating cause there are a few different stalls with all sorts of good food. Anyway, today I discovers an Indian place on campus that makes Prata. Then I saw a menu, or a piece of paper listing all the different things they serve I guess. Anyway it hadd all the different things you could get with your prata. Today I started out with a cheese prata. It is just the prata, then they put cheese on it and then the cook it on like a cast iron stove thing, like what you would cook pancakes on. Than they fold it over, and serve it to you with curry sauce for dipping. Sounds familar eh? So although I will not be as percise with this, I do plan on trying out all the different types, like egg, mushroom, and other stuff like that, there was like 20 or 30 on the menu thing. I will keep yo posted on my favorite one.
Lesson 2, I will never speak Chinese
So a few days ago while I was filling out which classes I wanted to take, I decided it would be fun to sign up for Elementary Chinese. It was just a fall back course, but I figured it would be fun to learn a little bit of the language that was spoken by many of the people here. However, once none of my other classes got approved I decided I should take it so that I dont owe money to Ithaca College when I return. Today was my first class. For two hours I repeated seemingly random sylabols that all sounded the same. Did you know that xi, ji, ti, and qi are all pronounced like tee. However tee means lucky, where as tee means chicken. You cant tell when I write it but I said those with different inflextions. That is to say that each sounds can be spoken four different ways. For example, lets all say tee, say it in one tone, without going up of down. Now say it while raising the pitch. Than say it by lowering the pitch and raising it half way. Now say it while just lowering it. For two hours I repeated with the rest of the class what the professor said in that manner. Then we would practice with our partner. My partner was Tachi and girl from Vietnam taking chinese as her third language. She uses many of these sounds that we were practicing in her first language so they came very easy to her. She giggled at my silly attempts to make the sounds like chuang and xing, which she commented that I, "have a husky vioce yes?" However I can now say hello quite proficiently and know a phrase that sounds like I am saying OOOOO YEAH, which means "I also am..." that is where you insert something something hao. I dont know what hao means, but it is at the end of like everything. Oh and I can kinda say "my name is jeremy" in chinese. And if I stay in the class long enough i will get to pick my Chinese name. The new game plan is to get another class approved and drop this class like spanish.
and finally...
Lesson 3, Although a little more expensive, Snapple does not come with aloe vera chunks
In every canned fruit drink you buy here, there are chunks of aloe vera in it. They sneak up on you and pop into your mouth or clog up your straw. It is kinda gross to chew your apple juice from a can. It takes a while to get used to. but I guess it is good for your skin, so rock on asian juice canning companies. But today I bought a grapeade snapple, and boy was it delgithful to enjoy the tarty taste of grape without juicy bits of plant floating into my mouth with every gulp. It was good.
well things are still going well, I got to talk to both my parents now I skype, my mom doesnt haave a mic yet so it was just me talking to her, but I will get to talk to her tomorrow some time. If you would like to talk to me on skype feel free to download it and find a microphone. My name is jertag653, or you can search my name, or my email address.
pictures from KL will be posted on Yahoo in a little bit. more details to follow.
If you would like my address here, just email me and I will send it to you.
Lesson 1, Prata is the new D.P. Dough
Most of you know about that heavenly place where droplets of wonderful are created. That little shop near the corner in downtown Ithaca that produces delightful treats that fill the stomache and warm the heart. Well there is a new calzone in town. They are called pratas. I was introduced to them a few days ago and loved them. They are like tortilla almost, but thinner. It is an Indian food that you can find at almost any hooku. Those are like food courts only outside, ussually in residential areas, but they are great for eating cause there are a few different stalls with all sorts of good food. Anyway, today I discovers an Indian place on campus that makes Prata. Then I saw a menu, or a piece of paper listing all the different things they serve I guess. Anyway it hadd all the different things you could get with your prata. Today I started out with a cheese prata. It is just the prata, then they put cheese on it and then the cook it on like a cast iron stove thing, like what you would cook pancakes on. Than they fold it over, and serve it to you with curry sauce for dipping. Sounds familar eh? So although I will not be as percise with this, I do plan on trying out all the different types, like egg, mushroom, and other stuff like that, there was like 20 or 30 on the menu thing. I will keep yo posted on my favorite one.
Lesson 2, I will never speak Chinese
So a few days ago while I was filling out which classes I wanted to take, I decided it would be fun to sign up for Elementary Chinese. It was just a fall back course, but I figured it would be fun to learn a little bit of the language that was spoken by many of the people here. However, once none of my other classes got approved I decided I should take it so that I dont owe money to Ithaca College when I return. Today was my first class. For two hours I repeated seemingly random sylabols that all sounded the same. Did you know that xi, ji, ti, and qi are all pronounced like tee. However tee means lucky, where as tee means chicken. You cant tell when I write it but I said those with different inflextions. That is to say that each sounds can be spoken four different ways. For example, lets all say tee, say it in one tone, without going up of down. Now say it while raising the pitch. Than say it by lowering the pitch and raising it half way. Now say it while just lowering it. For two hours I repeated with the rest of the class what the professor said in that manner. Then we would practice with our partner. My partner was Tachi and girl from Vietnam taking chinese as her third language. She uses many of these sounds that we were practicing in her first language so they came very easy to her. She giggled at my silly attempts to make the sounds like chuang and xing, which she commented that I, "have a husky vioce yes?" However I can now say hello quite proficiently and know a phrase that sounds like I am saying OOOOO YEAH, which means "I also am..." that is where you insert something something hao. I dont know what hao means, but it is at the end of like everything. Oh and I can kinda say "my name is jeremy" in chinese. And if I stay in the class long enough i will get to pick my Chinese name. The new game plan is to get another class approved and drop this class like spanish.
and finally...
Lesson 3, Although a little more expensive, Snapple does not come with aloe vera chunks
In every canned fruit drink you buy here, there are chunks of aloe vera in it. They sneak up on you and pop into your mouth or clog up your straw. It is kinda gross to chew your apple juice from a can. It takes a while to get used to. but I guess it is good for your skin, so rock on asian juice canning companies. But today I bought a grapeade snapple, and boy was it delgithful to enjoy the tarty taste of grape without juicy bits of plant floating into my mouth with every gulp. It was good.
well things are still going well, I got to talk to both my parents now I skype, my mom doesnt haave a mic yet so it was just me talking to her, but I will get to talk to her tomorrow some time. If you would like to talk to me on skype feel free to download it and find a microphone. My name is jertag653, or you can search my name, or my email address.
pictures from KL will be posted on Yahoo in a little bit. more details to follow.
If you would like my address here, just email me and I will send it to you.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Report 2: Kuala Lumpur me another
This past weekend as few of the exchange students and I ambarked on or trip to KL entitles Kuala Lumpur me another due to the high cost of alcohol here in Singapore and Sascha's need to get a little tipsy. Although a cheap bar was not to be found in KL, we had a wonderful time.
It started very late Friday night as we took the 10pm bus to KL. We arrived at about 4am Saturday morning and after paying too much for a taxi found ourselves in a McDonald's to pass the rest of the morning and venture into Malaysia's largest city. That morning, we went to the famous Petronous Towers, I am not sure of the spelling. But they are the towers from the movie Entrapment. It has been a dream of Julio's to see these towers and he was very excited to get the chace not only to see them , but to go up into the sky bridge later in the day. After taking lots of pictures there, we went inside and go tour money changed to Ringets, the Malaysian currency.
By then we had killed enough time to check into our hostel. It was not the Ritz by any means, but for 9 ringets or roughly 2 american dollars, it did the job. Jeff and I stayed in the common room. Michele and Danielle were in the ladies only common room. Julio and Sascha had a private room with a fan, Jen, Rachel, and Alicia also had a private room. Finally having a place to crash, we all tried to take a little nap before going back to Petronous and than out. no one slept very well at all, but by 5 o'clock we were on our way to the towers. It was very nice to go up in them. We have lot of pictures. After that we went to a nice little bar, restuarant thing and had some burgers and fries. I just had soup. Then we walked back to the hostel with a littl shopping along the way. Back at the hostel, we went to the rooftop bar to meet some other backpackers. I met a guy from the Phill area. It was nice to talk about some stuff from home. He agreed and sad it was nice to talk to someone about sports like footaball and mean the eagles and steelers instead of Manchester United.
The next day we woke up early and were off to the Batu Caves. THey are natural caves with a a huge hindu statue erected in front of them. If was very cool and only coasted two ringet to get there. There were 272 steps to get to the top. All of us went up and the caves were beatuful. You enter into a huge cave and then walk back into a place where there is no rock above you. Like a natural courtyard or something. THere were temples and such in there and all kinds of different staues. In a few weeks the place will be packed due to a hindu celebration.
After that we went to find the Lake Gardens. WIth Julio still having a headache from the morning it was hard going for him. And after walking around for a long time, we finally found a nice little street side resturant to sit and relax at. I had three fried bannanas for one ringet, very well priced. They were delicous and I will get them again if given the chance. Then I decided to try a real Malaysian meal. So I went up to the waitor guy and asked him for his best dish. He recomended rice and a mixture or stuff that he refferd to as kinda like fish shells, (I assume fish eggs). Then plop on a fish and some sauce from the end of the table, and it would be good. I said ok. They eat with their hands a lot of the time so I asked him if that is what I should do and he said yes. It was good. However Michele did not appreciate the idea of having the entire fish on the plate, tail head and all. You eat the fish almost like how were would eat chicken, you pick the meat off the bones and put it with a finger scoop of rice and the sauce stuff and eat it up. It was very tastey, and just spicey enough to be very delightfull.
Then we stumbled upin a concert in the park. We seemed to be the stars of the show as the MC of the concert kept refering to us and everyone on stage kept welcoming us to Malaysia. We couldnt understand what they were saying most of the time, but every once in a while they would look at us and speak in english to explain things. I even got interviewed by a news channel that was covering the event. I guess they recoginized me. Anyway the concert was great with traditional dance that was beatiful including a spectacular version of the song "Malaysia Truely Asia" that stole our hearts.
With a few hours left we went to the market. They are very fun. You walk up to the shop and they ask you for prices and you negotiate untill you eventually pay too much for something or walk away. At this point I had ran out of money, so I simply walked around and negotiated prices untill they were very low and then walked away. At one shirt and sweatship shop, i negotiated two soccer warm up jackets pretty low. I talked to the dudes ther for about fve mintutes. The starting price for one jacket was about 100 ringet. At the end when I walked away they had the jackets in the bag and trying to chake my hand and give me 2 for 70 ringets. It was an ok deal, but it shows that even at that price they were too willing to sell to me and therefore would have made a killing off of that.
We found the bus home with no problem, got back to our dorms at about 5am. All in all the trip was great. We will start planning our next one soon. It only cost about 50 us dollars for me to do teh whole trip, and I bought a watch and paid way too much for the taxi in KL.
It started very late Friday night as we took the 10pm bus to KL. We arrived at about 4am Saturday morning and after paying too much for a taxi found ourselves in a McDonald's to pass the rest of the morning and venture into Malaysia's largest city. That morning, we went to the famous Petronous Towers, I am not sure of the spelling. But they are the towers from the movie Entrapment. It has been a dream of Julio's to see these towers and he was very excited to get the chace not only to see them , but to go up into the sky bridge later in the day. After taking lots of pictures there, we went inside and go tour money changed to Ringets, the Malaysian currency.
By then we had killed enough time to check into our hostel. It was not the Ritz by any means, but for 9 ringets or roughly 2 american dollars, it did the job. Jeff and I stayed in the common room. Michele and Danielle were in the ladies only common room. Julio and Sascha had a private room with a fan, Jen, Rachel, and Alicia also had a private room. Finally having a place to crash, we all tried to take a little nap before going back to Petronous and than out. no one slept very well at all, but by 5 o'clock we were on our way to the towers. It was very nice to go up in them. We have lot of pictures. After that we went to a nice little bar, restuarant thing and had some burgers and fries. I just had soup. Then we walked back to the hostel with a littl shopping along the way. Back at the hostel, we went to the rooftop bar to meet some other backpackers. I met a guy from the Phill area. It was nice to talk about some stuff from home. He agreed and sad it was nice to talk to someone about sports like footaball and mean the eagles and steelers instead of Manchester United.
The next day we woke up early and were off to the Batu Caves. THey are natural caves with a a huge hindu statue erected in front of them. If was very cool and only coasted two ringet to get there. There were 272 steps to get to the top. All of us went up and the caves were beatuful. You enter into a huge cave and then walk back into a place where there is no rock above you. Like a natural courtyard or something. THere were temples and such in there and all kinds of different staues. In a few weeks the place will be packed due to a hindu celebration.
After that we went to find the Lake Gardens. WIth Julio still having a headache from the morning it was hard going for him. And after walking around for a long time, we finally found a nice little street side resturant to sit and relax at. I had three fried bannanas for one ringet, very well priced. They were delicous and I will get them again if given the chance. Then I decided to try a real Malaysian meal. So I went up to the waitor guy and asked him for his best dish. He recomended rice and a mixture or stuff that he refferd to as kinda like fish shells, (I assume fish eggs). Then plop on a fish and some sauce from the end of the table, and it would be good. I said ok. They eat with their hands a lot of the time so I asked him if that is what I should do and he said yes. It was good. However Michele did not appreciate the idea of having the entire fish on the plate, tail head and all. You eat the fish almost like how were would eat chicken, you pick the meat off the bones and put it with a finger scoop of rice and the sauce stuff and eat it up. It was very tastey, and just spicey enough to be very delightfull.
Then we stumbled upin a concert in the park. We seemed to be the stars of the show as the MC of the concert kept refering to us and everyone on stage kept welcoming us to Malaysia. We couldnt understand what they were saying most of the time, but every once in a while they would look at us and speak in english to explain things. I even got interviewed by a news channel that was covering the event. I guess they recoginized me. Anyway the concert was great with traditional dance that was beatiful including a spectacular version of the song "Malaysia Truely Asia" that stole our hearts.
With a few hours left we went to the market. They are very fun. You walk up to the shop and they ask you for prices and you negotiate untill you eventually pay too much for something or walk away. At this point I had ran out of money, so I simply walked around and negotiated prices untill they were very low and then walked away. At one shirt and sweatship shop, i negotiated two soccer warm up jackets pretty low. I talked to the dudes ther for about fve mintutes. The starting price for one jacket was about 100 ringet. At the end when I walked away they had the jackets in the bag and trying to chake my hand and give me 2 for 70 ringets. It was an ok deal, but it shows that even at that price they were too willing to sell to me and therefore would have made a killing off of that.
We found the bus home with no problem, got back to our dorms at about 5am. All in all the trip was great. We will start planning our next one soon. It only cost about 50 us dollars for me to do teh whole trip, and I bought a watch and paid way too much for the taxi in KL.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Report 1.99: Update
Ok, so the last post was a little bungled together with no paragraph breaks. It is also a little out of date. This is because my interenet was not working well and I just got it fixed and copy and pasted the last blog I was going post. Here is a quick rundown of what else I have done.
Water Polo, I got to train with my hall's water polo team last night. It was very difficult to play, I am not used to all that treading. But I think I did alright and the guys gave me lots of tips on how to play better. I cannot represent my hall in the games because I have not been on the lease since November. However, Jeremy (one of the guys) has told me to complain to the people in charge and claim discrimination haha. I will go and talk to the people some time and see what they will do, if they will make an exception.
I am now registered for three classes. They seem interesting and that I will like them. However, I still have not been to a class yet.
Today I went into the city with Julio, Alicia, and Sascha. We got our tickets to Malaysia and back. The orginal plan was to leave here at 10 and ge tto Malaysia early morning spend all Saturday and Come back around 530 and be on campus by midnight because Danielle has an 830 class on Monday. However because the bus at 530 was completely full, we made an executive decision at the bus terminal to take the 1030 back to SIngapore and be back on campus around 6 or 7 am. This decision was not well received by Danielle and Michele and I am blamed for the troubles.
Anyway, more updates on food. After swimming training tonight I went to a little cafe near campus and had some indian food. I believe the name is something like plasta, but I dont think I pronounce it right. It is almost like a thin tortilla fried on a grill with stuff inside of whatever you want. I found it to be delicious and will try to learn the name and all the different things you can get with it so that I can eat it many times.
OK, well tomorrow I think I will go to some place that Jen was talking about. It is like a national park. That should be fun.
Water Polo, I got to train with my hall's water polo team last night. It was very difficult to play, I am not used to all that treading. But I think I did alright and the guys gave me lots of tips on how to play better. I cannot represent my hall in the games because I have not been on the lease since November. However, Jeremy (one of the guys) has told me to complain to the people in charge and claim discrimination haha. I will go and talk to the people some time and see what they will do, if they will make an exception.
I am now registered for three classes. They seem interesting and that I will like them. However, I still have not been to a class yet.
Today I went into the city with Julio, Alicia, and Sascha. We got our tickets to Malaysia and back. The orginal plan was to leave here at 10 and ge tto Malaysia early morning spend all Saturday and Come back around 530 and be on campus by midnight because Danielle has an 830 class on Monday. However because the bus at 530 was completely full, we made an executive decision at the bus terminal to take the 1030 back to SIngapore and be back on campus around 6 or 7 am. This decision was not well received by Danielle and Michele and I am blamed for the troubles.
Anyway, more updates on food. After swimming training tonight I went to a little cafe near campus and had some indian food. I believe the name is something like plasta, but I dont think I pronounce it right. It is almost like a thin tortilla fried on a grill with stuff inside of whatever you want. I found it to be delicious and will try to learn the name and all the different things you can get with it so that I can eat it many times.
OK, well tomorrow I think I will go to some place that Jen was talking about. It is like a national park. That should be fun.
Report 1.9: Fun before classes
So classes start tomorrow and I am not sure yet on my schedule. It will be interesting to see which classes I get into, but that will be a different report. For now, I was just worried about getting a little more fun in before they started. So today I played a little soccer. Most people Ive talked to call it soccer, some do call it football. But regardless, it was very fun. One thing I learned today was that the Singaporean weahter is much different than ours. Because it is so warm and humid, I grew tired and sweaty very fast. However I didnt do too bad for not playing soccer in so long. Some of the exchange students from eurpoe were very good, as well as a few Singaporean players we joined. The great thing about playing sports is that they are the same in any language. My fun for yesterday was traveling around Singapore for the cultural tour put on by the International Student Center. We went all over the city to four differnt stops. At the first stop, we learned about a group of people called the Paranakan. They are chinese/mayasian singaporeans. Like french canadian, only not french. Or canadian... you know what I mean. Anyway it was neat eating some of their food. I even learned how to make a dumpling. And by learned I mean I did what the guy making them was doing and have him correct me and stuff. While there I sat by two Germans and four Iranians. They were all grad students getting their masters or PHD. I did not feel very smart. We went to Arab street where there is lots of carpet stores. Then to Little India where I got a slurpie at the 7 Eleven and saw a cow. And the last stop was china town. There was lots of good food in china town. Julio, Sasche, and I found a plaque that talked of the streets of the dead (In older times people would go to die there cause bad luck was put on whatever house you died in). The last word on the engraved plaque was place, spelled palce, crossed out with a permanent marker with the correct spelling underneath. We found this funny and took a picture. Well, Sasche and Julio did, I forgot my camera. But I will get some to show you all. That night we went to the staff lounge and sang Caryoke in the room they have set up for it. That was a blast and many funny videos are now on Sasche's camera. We are going to go to some bars that do caryoke later on and really spice it up then. Tomorrow I go back into the city to get my student pass. This will take almost all day and is very annoying. I will not forget any papers this time.
Friday, January 5, 2007
Report 1.1: The City
Well once I had been at NTU for a while, I decided to travel to the city because I was bored out of my mind and did not want to fall asleep and then not be able to sleep that night. (Which I experienced last night). So I took the bus to Boon Lay and got my EZ-Link card and took the green line towards Paris Ris. THen I got on the red line and went to Orchards. There is a huge shopping center at Orchards. I walked in and began wondering around. Soon I found myself surounded by purses, shoes, trendy clothing, large sunglasses, and many asian school girls. I decided to go up stairs. Upstairs was a more familar type of mall with little shops everywhere. A man told me he would give me a good deal on a custom suite. But from talking to other people, I can get amazing deals on custom suites in Malasia, if that is how you spell it.
I paid too much for an outlet adapter and decided to take the train back to NTU before I spent any more money. In the train I began to realize just how crowded this tiny island is. Traveling back at around 5 oclock was a bad idea. People would come on untill there was no more room for anybody. Then more people would get on. What amazes me is how well everyone keeps there ballance on the train. I am grabbing on to the ceilling, the doors, and reaching over people to grab the bar while everyone else just stands there.
I found my bus just fine and got back to NTU without a problem. Since then, I have gone into the city again. Today Michele, Danielle and I went in to get our student passes. Once we were there I realized that I forgot some of my paper work. I am going to go in tomorrow with Sasha, a German guy that walked around with us today. His friend Berry knew a lot about the city and all the buildings and history. So I took lots of pictures.
So far I have ate, Beef Fried Rice, Roasted Duck, Spicy chicken noodle, and Laksa (seafood and I think crawfish). Everything is really good and I can get a meal for about 2 sing dollars.
I paid too much for an outlet adapter and decided to take the train back to NTU before I spent any more money. In the train I began to realize just how crowded this tiny island is. Traveling back at around 5 oclock was a bad idea. People would come on untill there was no more room for anybody. Then more people would get on. What amazes me is how well everyone keeps there ballance on the train. I am grabbing on to the ceilling, the doors, and reaching over people to grab the bar while everyone else just stands there.
I found my bus just fine and got back to NTU without a problem. Since then, I have gone into the city again. Today Michele, Danielle and I went in to get our student passes. Once we were there I realized that I forgot some of my paper work. I am going to go in tomorrow with Sasha, a German guy that walked around with us today. His friend Berry knew a lot about the city and all the buildings and history. So I took lots of pictures.
So far I have ate, Beef Fried Rice, Roasted Duck, Spicy chicken noodle, and Laksa (seafood and I think crawfish). Everything is really good and I can get a meal for about 2 sing dollars.
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Report 1: The Journey
So about an hour and a hlaf after the ball droped I was headed back home to finish packing, unload the car, reload the car, and try and organize my backpacking equipment as best I could. Then at 3:30 am 01 Jan, we were off. I slept most of the car ride, got my tickets no problem, and then slept almost the whole flight to Chicago. Which was good because I sat beside a lady that looked mean. Once in Chicago I sat down at my gate and watched more than half of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II revenge of the oze. Then Dan called from Iraq and I chit chated with him for what will be the last time in a long time. Then it was time for the grandaddy of all flights.
I sat in the way back of the 747. I think there were about 600 people on board. Maybe a little less. I sat by a guy named Deal. I dont know how to spell him name but he is in toy sales, so I bet that is how you would spell it. He travels to Hong Kong once a year for a big toy thing. I didn ask him much about it. He was interested in where I was going and stuff, so that is what we talked about when I wasn't watching the inflight movies, he wasn't playing his PSP, and neither of us was sleeping. Which was rare. All and all the flight was a solid OK. It could have been way worse. However there was a guy a few seats ahead of me that had something wrong with him and they brought him an oxygen tank and stuff. He is alright to the best of knowledge but I missed a lot of Gridiron Gang becuase there were so many people standing up in front of me.
Once in Hong Kong, I found my connection flight to Singapore, slept through most of that, and arrived with no problems. I got through everything just fine and waited for about 30 to 40 minutes for my taxi. After me and my taxi driver stoped to ask people where in the world house three was, I arrived by about 2 am 03 Jan.
I jumped in bed at 2:30 and promptly woke up 4 and a half hours later, still tired but not able to go back to sleep.
I sat in the way back of the 747. I think there were about 600 people on board. Maybe a little less. I sat by a guy named Deal. I dont know how to spell him name but he is in toy sales, so I bet that is how you would spell it. He travels to Hong Kong once a year for a big toy thing. I didn ask him much about it. He was interested in where I was going and stuff, so that is what we talked about when I wasn't watching the inflight movies, he wasn't playing his PSP, and neither of us was sleeping. Which was rare. All and all the flight was a solid OK. It could have been way worse. However there was a guy a few seats ahead of me that had something wrong with him and they brought him an oxygen tank and stuff. He is alright to the best of knowledge but I missed a lot of Gridiron Gang becuase there were so many people standing up in front of me.
Once in Hong Kong, I found my connection flight to Singapore, slept through most of that, and arrived with no problems. I got through everything just fine and waited for about 30 to 40 minutes for my taxi. After me and my taxi driver stoped to ask people where in the world house three was, I arrived by about 2 am 03 Jan.
I jumped in bed at 2:30 and promptly woke up 4 and a half hours later, still tired but not able to go back to sleep.
Intro
I am starting this blog to allow you people to read about what I am up to. I hope to email many of you personally, however, I will be living it up here at Singapore and will not have much time to email everyone about things I have done. I am not typing a lot tonight because I am tired and need some sleep. Look to tomorrow for the first report about my travels and my first day.
ps I choose this template to honor the great park blogspot put on by the dean of the Park School of Communications. Woot.
ps I choose this template to honor the great park blogspot put on by the dean of the Park School of Communications. Woot.
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