*1037 - marvels

I haven't uploaded pictures on FB in a century or so (well, about a year) and am now marvelling at the technology that is face recognition. Wow?

*1036 - one summery night and one summery day

This is what we did one summery night:

Make (for me) / eat (for me and him) my homemade meatballs on my patio. First attempt involving a splash of every herb I could lay my hands on (in my kitchen, this means a LOT) and turning out absolutely DEElicious.



And this is what we did one summery day:

Sat out on a patio eating sandwiches and grilled fish and drinking nicely chilled beers, watching a hostess turning pinker and sweatier and increasingly flustered in the heat, planning for a very welcome visit the next week, enjoying the fact that we could sit back, kick our shoes off, enjoy the sun, enjoy the long weekend, enjoy each other.

And then wandered in the direction of frozen custards, got a s'mores-flavoured scoop in a chocolate cone, shared it with two little spoons, and walked home all sticky and happy.

*1035 - VERY IMPORTANTLY

INCOHERENT FROM TIREDNESS

ABOUT TO TUMBLE OUT OF CHAIR

BUT FIRST!

I NEED TO DECLARE MY LOVE

FOR ...

Char siew sou!

And egg tarts.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.



Dimsum in Hong Kong, yeahhh. Love it love it love it.

*1034 - and, home

Very nice, and oddly normal, to be home.

Friends, tell me your #'s, and tell me if you want to hang out :)

*1033 - the first leg

While I could have much more quickly done this through the 3G network on my phone, here's proof that this bus has free and functional wifi, in addition to its comfy seats, stunning emptiness (10 of us, at most), an adorable driver who comes round offering bottles of water, and negligible cost of $15 per ticket from Boston to New York. How is that not a bargain?

This marks the first leg of my little vacay that is sucking up more than half my days off for the year--two days in NYC, three in Hong Kong, and three weeks at home. Awaiting happy reunions with friends and family in each of the above three. Being away (sadly so) makes one appreciate people better.

On the agenda,
... Walking the familiar streets (and smelling the familiar subway stench heh heh) of NYC
... Some last minute shopping, unless I restrain myself
... Portuguese egg tarts, vegetarian Buddhist meals, and dim sum
... Being in Vienna when actually in Macau
... My customary chilli crab family welcome dinner
... A haircut by Asians who actually know how to cut Asian hair (and perhaps my usual reddish tint, though that might mean being mildly matchy matchy with the redhead)
... Facial, eyebrows, all that good stuff
... Regular swims (and none of that silly indoor swimming pool at the gym nonsense)
... Roasting at the beach by day and sipping sangrias at the shore by night
... Fancy lunches and hawker dinners
... Tooty frooty party plans in the making (hint: a FB event needs to be created ASAP)
... Wine, cheese, fruit under the stars (sounds like an atas family tradition, but really, we're just sitting around in our PJ's on the roof getting mildly sticky from the humidity)
... Attempting to play the same songs on the piano that I attempt to play during each short trip home
... Live music at outdoor bars by the river
... Perhaps taking advantage of the offer of an express Universal Studios pass ... Hmm ...
... Cooking and baking and making the family plump with the goodness of EV's home cooked delights
... Laska and hokkien mee and chicken rice and char kuay teow and prata and baby kailan and har cheong gai and mee sua and yong tau foo and ban mian and omgomgomggomgg the list goes on how to eat so many things in such little time?! Who wants to go hawker centre-ing with me?
... And besides all the food, simply: to see all of you who matter.

The last point is the most important one, and really is the only reason for my trip home.

Home home home.

It's nice to be able to say that I'm finally returning home. Home is not a word I would use for anywhere else.

Yup. Home.

*1032 - will be back

I know I have become boring of late in this little virtual space, which often reflects the inverse of the interestingness of my actual life. Life continues to be fascinatingly interesting, and (sadly often a correlation to that is for it to be ...) overwhelmingly tiring, but at least the reasons for the tiredness are good, happy reasons.

5 minute breather over, time to head out!

*1031 - foreign

Singapore and foreign talent.

The influx of foreign workers may feel unsettling to some, but I do think we will be at a disadvantage without.

*1030 - merely pretty

A trip to the Museum of Fine Art unearthed a few pretty things, but nothing much more than that. I don't mean to put down the museum, but Iris and I left having gained less than we had hoped for. Not my favourite for sure, but then, I've always been partial instead to modern art ...

Images from the Chihuly exhibition: extravagant, pretty, large, eye-catching.







But my favourite painting of the night ... "I paint the white as well as the black, and the white is just as important." Franz Kline. Just brilliant. Love it.

*1029 - tornado watch

The colleagues scared me silly today by announcing that there was a "tornado watch" in the area. Being Singaporean, the closest thing to a natural disaster we get are heavy monsoon rains which (rarely) result in flooded shopping malls, soggily destroyed businesses :(, and citizens angry at the government for wussy drainage. So, pretty ignorant there.

I was all ready to dive under my desk for maximum shelter, saved my work obsessively (why, what could be worse than getting wiped out by a tornado AND losing the monster of the file I had been slaving over?), and had a minor flip out moment when I realised I had left my sun roof tilted. Sped out to save poor little yellow bug, only to discover there wasn't even a drizzle in the clouds, though the air strangely warm and heavy and yellow, and I was absolutely positive that Harold Camping had been 11 days early in his predictions.

But thank God for keeping us safe from the wreck that the tornado caused just a little bit further West.

*1028 - wanna be a millionaire?

Country with the highest proportion of millionaires: ...

Singapore is number one at 15.5%. (The United States is seventh at 4.5%.)