One year and counting-

This past week marked one year living in Singapore and I’m still alive to tell about it. Actually life is pretty easy here. Work is generally fun but sometimes frustrating. There have been some recent developments in my group at work and we’ll start doing some business in Shanghai, China; I really want to go to China- if not to Shanghai for work then on my own for vacation.

In the last year I’ve also been fortunate to travel around a lot:
Siem Reap (Angkor Wat), Cambodia; Bangkok, Thailand two times, U.S. two times; Bintan, Indonesia; India (New Delhi, Jaipur, Agra-Taj Mahal); Batam, Indonesia three times; Koh Samui, Thailand; and Phuket, Thailand. And next week the office is shutting down between Christmas and New Years so I’m going back to Phuket, Thailand for 6 days- not because it’s that exciting of a place and it’s going to way too crowded but it’s easy to plan a trip there at the last minute and it should be nice and sunny. After that, I’m flying to either Bali or Java to spend a few days in central Java to visit Borobudor before making my way to Ubud, Bali to where I’ll meet some friends from San Diego- we’re renting a glass studio for two weeks there, relax, practice glass blowing and have fun.

Wow, life it so good, right! I can’t believe it, right! Well there are some things that I miss (not in any particular order):
-Bar-b-ques- they’re pretty rare here
-Beef that tastes good- almost all Australian beef here- I’ve never really appreciated USDA beef before this
-Good beer- there are some microbreweries here that make good beers but it seems the locals really like their beer sweet instead of hoppy so they’re forced to make the beers more malty than I like- even beers that should be more hoppy like Pale Ales and IPAs,
-Cheap beer/wine- wine is so expensive, even wine that is like $5 USD is more like $12-15USD here. Going out to a bar in some areas expect to pay close to $10USD for one pint of beer.
-Family close by- hmm.. none of my family followed me out here so I don’t get to see them that much.
-Living next to construction sites- well, it’s often loud.
That’s a pretty short list. Not so bad, I guess.

So now some of the good things:
-Easy to travel- 2 hours flight and you can be in a handful of SE Asian countries
-Public transportation- after living in San Diego who could have guessed public transportation could be so convenient. Buses and the subways can get you pretty much everywhere you need to go and it’s cheap. And if you’re in a real rush you can take a taxi that is still cheap compared to most other cities.
-Food- it’s so cheap… depending on where you want to eat. I’m not going to rave that it’s all so good because that seems to be something Singaporeans do here and it’s unjustified- sure there is a lot of food here but to use it to define your country (they call it a Makan Culture) by saying the food is so good/cheap and that they eat so much seems to be a ridiculous thing to do. I don’t think there is that much more food here than any other major city. Sure there are really expensive places you can eat at but there are also a lot of places to get really good local food from all over Asia and it’s generally good –sometimes great and most times cheap. Then there are the hawkers (or street food centers) where a meal costs maybe a few dollars USD.

These lists seem pretty short and sad. I think I should put some more thought into them to express myself better… maybe by next year I have some better lists.