And so it ends...

The computer is being unplugged tonight so this is the last post while in Singapore. We've had amazing adventures here but there was so much more we could have done. We are definitely ready to go home, but I wouldn't say "no" to another extended stay in Singapore!

I again have to thank Trish (and the entire Soft Star crew) for allowing me to come on this adventure. It is a gift I hope I can repay some day. I also want to thank my mom for traveling out here with me and helping us to settle in. Thank you Mom.

I asked Kahlil and his favorite things in Singapore are the swimming pools, the hawker stands, and the double-decker buses. Langston agreed. The hawker stands took me by surprise... but I must say he is quite a bit more adventurous with his food now than he was when we first got here. I wonder if his like of the hawker stands has less to do with the food and more with the fact that you are eating out in the open air.

The things I will miss most are...
FOOD!!! - Six years ago when I was preparing for a business trip to Singapore somebody asked me what I wanted to do when here. I said eat. At that time I didn't get a chance to really relish all that Singapore has to offer. This time around I feel like we did a pretty go job of trying lots of different foods and venues, but I think we still missed a lot. A couple of my favorite eats have been: BBQ stingray, satay, fresh lime juice, fresh cane juice, mango milk ice, and bok lai. We are bringing home a cook book, but I think it just wont be the same. Even if we get the recipe right, I don't think we can recreate the hawker stand experience.

Thunder storms - It is so exciting when a good storm rolls in. It tingles so many senses - misty breeze on the skin, booms in the ears, flashes across the eyes. I'm a little afraid of thunderstorms at home and I think I figured out why they don't bother me at all here... at home you can be in a field and the lightning might think you are a good conduit to the ground. But here, surrounded by 20 story buildings and 300 foot cranes, you really don't have to worry about lightning striking you. And of course it goes without saying, we'll all miss the sunshine... especially next February when the Oregon gloom is in full swing.

Kitchen and Bath Drains - Most all of the private and public kitchens and bathrooms I saw here had drains in them. That is common in industrial / public spaces at home, but not in private homes. At first I thought it was strange but then I learned the true value of these drains as we were working out the kinks with Langston's potty training. If we ever build our own house, don't be too surprised if you find drains in places you don't typically expect.

Fashion - While I will never be confused for a fashion-ista, I do enjoy flipping through the red carpet editions of magazines and watching the occasional episode of America's Next Top Model. At home, fashion is almost a four letter word but here fashion is everywhere. I have enjoyed people watching those that have put more than five minutes into their appearance. If we lived here for several years, who knows, I might develop a sense of style... might...

Touch-me-not plants (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mimosa_pudica) - I spent countless hours as a kid in Hawaii touching these plants with a twig to watch the leaves and stems fold up. I would try to touch them so lightly only one of the little leaves would fold leaving the adjacent leaves in place. It was a fun game. Seeing them when we first arrived here brought back a wave of nostalgia and a warm fuzzy feeling of being a carefree kid on a tropical island. While here I taught my boys how to 'play with' these plants as I did around their age. While we weren't here very long, I hope they remember these plants fondly too.

Public Transit - It was fantastic to live here for four months and not get behind the wheel of a car once AND to not feel trapped by that fact. The fact that city buses and the MRT can get you within two blocks of just about anywhere in the city is fantastic. But what I really love is how well the system works... you just add $$ to your transit card and then tap in when you get on the bus, tap out when you get off. EASY. So easy, in fact, even a three year old can master it.

Well, that about wraps it up. Good night Singapore. I hope to see you again some day.

Loose Ends

I realized there were a few thing that I wanted to share, but got busy with life. Now that our time is winding down, it's now or never!

The first loose end, is Langston's school. In previous posts I said that he started at Superland and told about his birthday celebration... but I had to share a couple photos and a little about Langston's routine.

This is the bus Langston rides to school in every day. It picks up him and Elizabeth, his classmate, at the lobby/breakfast room of our apartment every morning around 8. This has got to be one of the cutest buses I've ever seen, especially in the afternoon when it is full of kiddos.

Speaking of breakfast and second breakfast and elevensies, I think Langston may be a hobbit. We have breakfast here at the apartment every morning - and he does not have a small breakfast rather eggs, fruit, cereal and yogurt... this is one day, not four. Then, according to the notes I get from school every day, he has a second breakfast at school. Granted, he usually only eats half portions at this meal, but still he eats half of it. But then comes morning tea which he seems to like since it is typically completely eaten. So now it's 10:30 am and he has already had three meals. As I said, hobbit! At school they also give him lunch... half portions again is the norm. Then he comes home and begs a PB&J out of me. Seriously. Five meals before 1pm. I guess it's no wonder he's got the miniature body of a 40-year-0ld beer drinker.

Another loose end, is my meeting the owner of Love for Earth. On my third attempt I finally meet Patrick, his wife, and two kids. They were quite surprised to have me just show up in their shop! We had a nice visit and they asked me questions about the shoes. Maybe they will surprise us at our shop one day.

Finally is the "student lead conference" at Kahlil's school. This is a meeting between students and their parents and is a chance for the student to show off all they learned and made that year. Kahlil was very proud to tell us the story of the Three Little Pigs with puppets, sing the 's' song, and show us all of his art work. He also had Jay and I both fill out one of the math worksheets he has done this year and then he checked our work. He checked on Jay first and Jay did both of his sections correct so he got two smiley faces. I got one section right and one smiley face, but on the second section I circled 6 even though it is smaller than 10. Kahlil found my error right away and boldly crossed out the 6 and circled the 10. I got a sad face for that section. His confidence in correcting my error was fantastic. I highly recommend these conferences. It really gives the kids a chance to spend some quality time with Mom and Dad.

WIld Singapore

Over the last few weeks, we've visited two of Singapore's natural offerings... Bukit Timah and Pulau Ubin. Since much of Singapore is well developed, it was nice to spend some time closer to nature.









Bukit Timah is a nature preserve in the center of the island and it contains the highest point on Singapore. We hiked from the visitor center to Bukit Timah Summit. Singapore is pretty flat and the summit is only 545 feet above sea level. But that was fine with us as it was a hot / humid day. Both boys did great on the hike and we saw some cool insects, butterflies, a terrapin, and MONKEYS!

The monkey troupe was hanging out at the summit. The females and babies were playing and grazing. The males were tussling and fishing for treats in the trash can. There were signs around asking us not to feed the monkeys and to put all trash in the bins. Apparently the monkeys didn't think putting something in the trash can meant it was off limits... and there wasn't much to stop them from opening up the trash cans and getting out what ever they wanted. Apparently the Singapore Parks service should investigate critter free trash cans such as those that can be found in Yosemite.

We saw a sign telling us about the snakes that can be found on Singapore... most of which are common in Bukit Timah. We did not see any snakes - sorry Sarah and Bob :-)




Pulau Ubin is a secondary island that you have to ride on a boat to get to. All the power there is via generator and there are very few cars. The island kampong (Malay for village) is the last in Singapore and has about 100 residents. This is suppose to give you an idea of what Singapore was like in the 1960's.

Last Tuesday was a holiday and Corina, the daughter of Tim from Soft Star, was coming into town for work. She took the red-eye from New Zealand to Singapore and go in early in the morning. We meet up with her around 11am and hit the MRT for the long train ride out to the the ferry point. We were surprised to find a pretty nice beach on this north-east corner of Singapore. The boys tried to talk us into some surf and sand time, but the promise of a boat ride got them over it.

Once on Pulau Ubin, we rented some bikes and made a circle of the island. Kahlil was a little rusty and it took a few tries before he had his petal-legs back. But he found them and was amazing. Langston got the best deal on the trip... a comfy seat on the back of my bike. The positive part of that situation was that I got an especially good workout.

We rode over to the Chek Jawa wetlands and got to see some cool ecosystems - mud and sand flats, mangroves, and coastal forests. We also visited House #1, a Tudor cottage that was built in the 1930's and it believed to have the only working fireplace in Singapore. It is now a visitor center. While walking around the wetlands we also saw a wild pig and her piglets! It was awesome.

It was again a sticky day. There were threatening thunder clouds, but they did not open up. It was nice that we didn't get rained on, but we were all pretty hot and sweaty and could have used a bit of a wash off.

While I had thought we would have Corina back to her hotel nice and early so she could catch up on sleep lost from her flight the night before, that was not to be. After the boat ride back to Singapore we had dinner at a local restraunt and introduced her to BBQ stingray. By the time dinner was over, and we FINALLY caught a cab, it was well into the evening by the time Corina got home. At least she had a good night sleep after an active day.

When it rains, it pours

So many posts... so little time... so here is a quick one.

Singapore weather is no joke. It will be sunny one minute and then thundering the next. These photos were taken in the span of about 10 minutes. Try to watch the building in the background with the blue roof...

Writing on the wall

Kahlil has had quite the expansion in his artistic expression lately. He typically draws for an hour or two every day and I want to share some of his creations...

These are skeletons taped up over Kahlil's bed. I'm not sure why he drew skeletons, but there the are.

These are scuba divers on our dinning room wall. These went up shortly after we bought him a snorkel and mask.

He got the idea to play restaurant and made a drink and food menus. He drew the pictures and I wrote the words. He told me he would be the waiter, Jay and Langston would pretend to be hungry, and I would be the cook. To be the cook, he told me conspiratorially, I just had to bang pots in the kitchen... this got a good giggle out of Jay and I. As it turned out Jay and I were the customers and he took our order which took some time because 'pepperoni pizza' and 'chocolate chip cookies' have a lot of letters. Langston was the cook and would deliver our food before Kahlil even finished writing it down.


Here is everybody's favorite mouse.

This is a picture of me, with my long hair, and hearts.


And not to be left behind, here are Langston's contributions to our living room wall. Purple seems to be his favorite color and he was quite proud of the circle on the left picture.

I'm old today! I'm as old as Dad!

Before we get into the birthday festivities and general Langston update, a quick disclaimer. All of the cakes and cupcakes mentioned in the following blog post were NOT baked by me. As Langston's birthday was drawing nearer, I considered baking a cake and decided I needed a test run with the 'oven' here in the apartment - it's a microwave / convection oven - so I made some brownies. I had no idea you could have brownies that were half raw, and I mean runny-raw, half nicely baked, and a thin layer of burn on top. It was really quite amazing.

On to the birthday celebrations!

We got a a jump start to Langston's birthday this past weekend. On Saturday we invited the Abadillas out for a movie - Rio - and pizza - Modesto's. After dinner we had a cake and Langston got two new cars from Audry and Theo. Movie was fun, pizza was good, cake was yummy, and the new cars Langston got were a hit... A good time was had by all.

Then yesterday, on Langston's actual birthday, we had not one, not two, but THREE celebrations. The first was at Superland Monetssori. Jay and I took over cupcakes, balloons, and goodie bags for all of Langston's classmates. When we got there, the teacher asked us a few questions about Langston's first three years on earth. Then the birthday ceremony began... there was a candle surrounded by all the months of the year. Langston held a globe and as he walked around the candle / months three times (representing his three trips around the sun) the teacher told stories about his life. I believe this is a standard Montessori birthday ceremony and it was quite touching.

After that, we sang happy birthday and everybody had a cupcake. Then was The Handing Out of Goodie Bags. This was a very formal process. All the kids had to sit along a wall and wait their turn. Then the teach would call on one of the kids to come up, shake Langston's hand and tell him happy birthday. Then Langston was to give the kid a goodie bag, making sure to use two hands when giving it away. Then that kid sat at the end of the line while the next child got their turn. As Jay said, it was a little like watching foreign dignitaries in training. After his birthday party at school, Langston opted to come home early with Jay and I rather than staying and playing with his friends.

Celebration number two was a tea party with a couple of the kids from here in the building. Elizabeth also goes to Superland and rides the bus with Langston, but she is five and in a different class. It is hard to see in this picture, but she is wearing a beautiful red kimono dress. Maitreya, who is a few weeks older than Langston, also joined us. The kids had a good time with their tea time snacks and juice (nobody actually had tea :-). Then we played with toys and did a round of Freeze-Dance - I had a song playing and the kids danced... when I paused the song, they had to freeze. They thought that was a great game.

And the final celebration was at dinner. It was just our family and we ate in. It was nice to all sit at the table together and chat. After dinner we sang Happy Birthday again and had cupcakes. Then Langston got to open his gifts from us and Grandma Ettie. The boys stayed up later than usual playing with the new toys. When bedtime finally rolled around, they were happy to go as Langston also got new books and everybody wanted to hear them. All in all, a great birthday day!

Now for a few notes on Langston. I don't have our wall marks at home to compare to, but I think he has recently gone through a bit of a growth spurt. He seems taller, but has not lost any girth... there is a large energy reserve on that boy :-) He has quite the vocabulary... I think even bigger than Kahlil's at this age. Lately he has been excited about moving his body in new ways... lifting one foot in the air while bending over, hopping backwards, and attempting jumping jacks. He doesn't want and, on most days, doesn't need to nap any more.

And I'm making it official... he is potty trained! There is still the occasional accident but they truly are accidents and he is very upset when they happen. He has a dry pull-up almost every night and if we were at home I would have him sleeping in underwear. I'm keeping him in pull-ups here because I don't want Helen to clean up a wet bed if he has a nighttime accident. So it took 5 months... MUCH better than Kahlil's 12 months!

So that is our little three year old!

By the way, the title of this post is what he said when he got up this morning... he he he!

Learning to Write

Last night Kahlil told me there was a gift for Jay and I in our room, we each had three pieces of paper on our pillows. I said that was great and continued with the bedtime routine not thinking much more about it. He has been busy lately cutting pieces of paper into smaller pieces of paper so I assumed his 'gifts' were the product of one of these sessions. So you can imagine my surprise, delight, and near tears when I found these:

These needed a little explanation this morning. Apparently they are people riding on elephants:


Langston has been asking me to draw rocket ships lately. These are very close to what Langston's rockets look like:

These needed no explanation and are the ones that almost made me cry. Jay didn't think he could do this alone and that I had helped... but I didn't:

The Elephants in the Resort

With excitement and numbered post-it notes, we counted down the days until we saw the elephants. We flew into Phuket (pronounced poo-KET, not the way you want to say it) last Saturday amidst much excitement. The boys were AWESOME on the plane... Kahlil got a new number / math book that completely absorbed him and Langston was busy playing with his new cars / airplanes. Everything was off to a great start.

When the plane started to land, there was quite a bit of cloud cover and once we hit the ground it was rainy. Hum, should blow over by tomorrow. We'll just spend today getting settled in. So we did... we checked in (at the Sheraton Grande Laguna), got our bags unpacked, took our first excursion out of the hotel room and ran into Lucky, the three year old elephant!

Luck was out for his afternoon visit. It was so fun to interact with him. He wrapped his trunk around my shoulders and gave me a kiss on the cheek. He landed a kiss on Kahlil's tummy, gave us high fives and was generally a sweet boy. Baby elephants have always been one of my favorite animals and Lucky just confirmed that my affections are well placed.

Even though it was raining, our excitement carried us out to the beach where we were the only crazy people there. But after a little while the sun was setting and the temperature cooled so we stepped into one of the beach restaurants and had a fantastic Thai dinner that included the best dessert in the world, mango sticky rice... YUM!

The next morning we started the day with a visit with both Lucky and Lilly, the 4 1/2 year old elephant. Lilly is a little bigger but just as sweet. We got to see more of their tricks... harmonic playing, massaging your back, waving, giving rides (which K and L weren't up to yet), and posing for photos. It is amazing that an animal so large is so gentle and kind.

After breakfast we spent some time in the endless pool... seriously we didn't think we would find the end. At the start is a sandy beach area so you can get sand in your suite but not get salty. Floating under a couple bridges would take you to the main swimming pool that included a swim up drink bar. Off of the main pool was a canal that wondered though the grounds so we were off to see where it took us. Kahlil was on a boogie board while Jay was helping Langston along. I followed on land and took pictures. After many twists and turns though the garden, we ended up at the final pool that was topped off with a waterfall. After lunch we were tuckered out and took a nap. In the afternoon the rain was a little more persistent and it was cooler so we didn't venture back into the water. Dinner again was the beach side restaurant... yum!


Then the next three days happened... each day was a little more rainy and cooler. It was too cold to spend time in the water so we wondered the grounds in the covered walk ways, hung out at the kids club (a play room), and watched TV. Not how we were expecting to spend our tropical vacation.

But it wasn't all bad. We did get to visit with Lilly and Lucky every morning and after a couple days the boys were confident enough to go for a ride on Lilly. Such a special activity and something I hope they both remember for a LONG time.

In the evening after dinner we found these AWESOME beetles laying about on the walk ways. It was strange as they would just be laying in the middle of a landing as though they had been paralyzed and dropped, waiting to be stepped on. At first we thought they were already dead, but after a strategically placed leaf poke we realized they were alive if not very lively. This gave us purpose... find the beetles and move them out of harms way. I'm not sure how many we 'rescued' but I'm sure the beetle population saw a small dip in die-off rate for the time we were there. We also saw a few huge millipedes and a pond full of talkative frogs. Some of the frogs were smaller than my pinky thumb nail. Of course there were geckos. What we did NOT see (thank GOD) was a snake.

On the day we were scheduled to leave, the day broke with some bird song and sunshine. That morning we said goodbye to Lucky and Lilly then ran back to our room to put on swim suites. We got in a quick kayak ride and some time in the surf. Then the rain started again, but no matter. We had to shower and pack.

All in all it was a bitter sweet trip. Jay's scuba adventure and the family snorkel day never happened. But we got to hang with Lucky and Lilly, see some cool bugs, and eat some fantastic food - YUM! It wasn't all we hoped for, but it was still a vacation to remember.

Living in Singapore

We've been busy the last couple weeks. Mostly just doing day-to-day living, but we have had some fun weekend activities. On the day to day front, Kahlil's school is going well. His class went to the Zoo and to a play (The Gingerbread Man) - he had fun at both. He had a school picture taken it was his typical Calvin-esque photo. Never ask that kid to smile if you want a good picture of him.

Langston has a couple weeks behind him at Superland pre-school. He is still not happy when he leaves in the morning, but he always has fun when he is there. Langston just takes a while to get use to something and he's getting there with Superland. One of his classmates, Elizabeth, lives in our building too. They get picked up and dropped off together on the school bus. This week I'm going to pickup a couple school t-shirt for Langston and he will be fully integrated!

We spent the day with the Abadilla family last weekend. They are another Corvallis family who just moved to Singapore in January and will be here for about two years. Audry and Theo are a bit older than Kahlil and Langston, but he kids had a GREAT time together at the pool, playing with Legos etc. While we were there Glory and Tom were talking about their spring break plans and I just smiled and nodded my head, not thinking about OUR spring break. (More on this later.) Here are the two families at the Newton Hawker Center (Audry is hiding behind Theo).


The day after the Abidilla's we went to Kahlil's schools Fun Fair. Every class / grade had some sort of booth for fund raising - water balloon toss, bake sale, temporary tattoos, etc. It really made me feel like we were a part of a community in a way that we never were during our time in Ireland.

This past weekend our apartment gave us tickets to see the Gazillion Bubbles show. It was cheesy and fun. There were some cool bubble tricks - smoke in bubbles, reaching inside larger bubbles and pulling out smaller bubbles. Bubbles rained down on us... Jay's hair was a bit of a bubble catcher. And there was a cool laser show at the end. If the show comes to your town, I recommend taking the kids.

On Sunday we went to the Jurong Bird Park. WAY cool! Jay, Kahlil, and my favorite thing was the Lory Loft - it is one of several huge walk-in aviaries. What made the Lory Loft special was that you got to by cups of nectar that the birds would then come eat out of your hand. Kahlil liked it so much he went back for a second cup. Langston preferred the exhibits where you just looked at the birds like the Scarlet Ibis and the pelicans.

Kahlil attended both birthday parties he was invited to... I'll have to do a post on those later.

It hit me two days after the Abadilla visit that Kahlil has spring break too... so I looked it up. It started in a week and it was a two week break! Rookie move! Guess this is training for when we are full time, school-aged kid parents. We quickly put together a trip to Phuket in Thailand for the second week. The first week of spring break is now and we are just kicking around Singapore.

A couple more lovely family photos from the Bird Park:

Your Average $12 Bouquet

A couple random observances on Singapore...

First off, for a country that is nearly on the equator, I expected more people to wear sunglasses. But I have found that most of the people who don eye protection are from the paler side of the skin spectrum and, I assume, not originally from these parts. I guess if you are raised in a country where there is sunshine 365 days a year, your eyes don't mind the shiny fireball in the sky. Us Oregon mushrooms need a little shade.

Second, it is like a game of umbrella quick draw when there is the slightest drizzle of rain. Granted a drizzle can quickly become, what Jay and I have started calling, "Wrath of God Rain". But it is still quite entertaining to see the number, size, and quickness with which the umbrellas emerge. And to be honest, I'm not sure where the umbrellas are stored during sunny weather because I don't usually see people toting them around. Maybe they have 007 umbrellas that fold to the size of a watch or something and when needed they pop up to be the Costco-family size monstrosities I see around.


And finally I want to say goodbye to Bubba. He passed away suddenly this week. We don't know for sure what happened, but it must have been quick. Sunday night Bubba meet Larry and Clairmonde for dinner as usual. When they came over Monday morning he did not show up. As Bubba likes he food, this was rather unusual. After a search Larry found Bubba's body in the green space behind our house.

We were so luck to have Bubba be a part of our lives for 15 years. I still remember the day they pulled the hefty kitten out of the box at the Human Society and he immediately grabbed onto my shoulder. We were there looking for a kitten that had run away from our house. This was not that kitten, but we knew immediately he was 'our' kitten. Bubba came home with us that day.

In his younger days he was a bit stubborn and, despite his size, was quite athletic. His given name was Kepler, but he outgrew that name and became Bubba. He didn't always have the best personal hygiene. He had beautiful green eyes which were impossible to capture on film. He was terrified of balls... we don't know why. He was little brother to Copernicus and Curie. He was big brother to Ray, Egon, and Venkman. In his later days he spent a lot of time sleeping, often with Ray, in the sun or near a heater vent. He REALLY liked food and would sneak bits of 'kitten food' whenever he had the chance. He was not an in-your-face cat. Rather he would hang back and wait for a quite moment to slide up next to you for a scratch behind the ear. And when he did ask you for a pet, you were happy to give it because he was such a special boy.

We will all miss Bubba.

Soft Star around the world

There is a shop here in Singapore that sells Soft Star Shoes. The other day Mom, Langston, and I went to Love for Earth to check it out. It took us a while to get there - it is quite far from the area of the city we are familiar with. We had to ride a bus I've never been on before and we were on it for LOTS of stops. But we got off at the right place and after a bit of walking, found the store.

The mom of one of Kahlil's classmates called the posted hours of Singaporean stores a guideline... not really something you should count on.

I looked up Love for Earth on-line and they have a posted opening time of noon (which is already pretty late by US standards). We got there at 11:59 - the lights are out and it's obvious no one is there. Well, they aren't suppose to open until noon so no big deal. So we do a loop around the shopping center and come back around 12:20 - the lights are out and no one is home. We're hungry so we decide to go eat in the cafe upstairs. After a lovely lunch we go back to Love for Earth around 1 - lights are ON but nobody is home. Apparently the proprietor had opened shop then stepped out for lunch. At that point we had to get going to make it home to meet Kahlil's bus. So we snapped a couple quick pictures and headed home. I'll try again in a couple weeks.

Here is the Love for Earth store. These were actually more like stalls in this shopping center... maybe 15 feet by 30 feet.

And right in the front window are Soft Star Shoes!