Back to San Diego

Today was my first official day back in the San Diego office- My three year Singapore contract is up and the terms to stay on longer locally weren’t that great so I’m back to San Diego for a new job with the same company. The original role of my group had changed a lot since I started in Singapore and the work wasn’t as interesting as it first was when I had arrived. I feel that staying on longer would have been interesting because of the local travel opportunities around the region but not for the actual work which had become pretty boring.

Actually I got back to California last week in time to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with family which was nice. The last two months have been hectic with friends visiting, last minute traveling and packing/preparing for the move so I’ve been very negligent at keeping these postings updated- well it’s been that way for most of this whole year really.

I can’t believe how fast these three years have gone. It’s been a blast and a lot of times felt more like vacation than actually working here. I’ve been lucky to see a lot over SE Asia and meet some really great friends. I still have a lot of trips to write about and pictures to post from this last year so I’ll keep updating this site.. but my first priority now is to find a car (since you can’t get around anywhere in San Diego without one) then a house.

two years in singapore

Time has really gotten away from me the last two months and now it's already just over two years and one month since I moved to Singapore with now, less than a year's time to finish my original contract. It really seems like time is running out and though I've been lucky enough to see a lot of the region this year there are still a lot of places I'd like to see.

Over the year I took quite a few trips:

Indonesia - to Bali twice, Jakarta and Cianjur on central Java, Lombok and Gili Trawangan, and Batam

Malaysia - Penang

Scotland - Tain, Edinburgh, Inverness and Loch Ness

London - England

Spain - Barcelona

Thailand - Bangkok twice and Phuket

Philippines - Boracay and Manilla

Cambodia - Phnom Penh

USA - San Diego, LA and Visalia, CA; Sedona, AZ; Portland and Corvallis, OR;

plus a few other places... Actually, looking at this makes me wonder when I had the time to take these trips. Pretty much every holiday weekend, and many others, I took advantage of it and got out of Singapore.

The places I'd still want to go this coming year? Vietnam, Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, back to Java, Japan, Hong Kong... ... too many to even start listing out

After living here for two years in many ways this feels like home but in many other ways it feels like just a temporary place to live... not really knowing where my home is since I have no family in the last town I lived in - San Diego for 9 years and also no house or apartment there. Like some say, home is where you lay you head (or hang your hat?!) but there is also something to say for living near family to make it feel more like home, too. It was nice to spend a lot of time with so much family over the holiday time this year. I think living here on the terms of a contract makes it feel temporary as well; maybe if i didn't have a contract and were just working here I would feel differently since it's a similar situation to when I lived in San Diego... it's just a different country.

For many people Singapore is a very transitional place in that they come to work on contracts or are stationed here but can be pulled at any time by their company to move back. Being a person in this situation as well, it's difficult to feel fully integrated knowing your contract will be coming up and many of the people you meet and friends you make might leave at any given time as well. Nevertheless I’ve made some very good friends over the last few years- some of which are still here and some of which have already moved on from Singapore.

Singapore itself is a very interesting city. It really has a lot of layers and faces to it. You could just as easily spend hundreds of dollars at a trendy restaurant or just a few for a meal from a street hawker and be satisfied with either. There are some malls with more than two Starbuck’s coffee shops inside while across the street you could get a stronger cup of local coffee for less than a dollar at open air shop. Walking down many streets and areas in the city, things are so new and orderly there is no sense of history or feeling that you’re in Asia compared to some other capital cities like Bangkok, Delhi or Jakarta. It’s really easy to see only this part of Singapore, too, but there are other neighborhoods not as sterile and orderly where it becomes much more clear that you are a foreigner and different no matter how much you try to assimilate… the language barrier (while normally not a problem in Singapore can be much more apparent in some places) being only part of it. And still, there are some things I doubt I’ll ever understand or be accepted into - the least of which are the seemingly endless amounts of karaoke lounges!

This coming year should be interesting as I decide what to do next after December – one thing for sure is I know the time will go fast. Too fast.

back home

After three and a half weeks I've made it back to Singapore after being in Visalia with family since mid December. That's a long time and lot has happened- some good and some not so good, some very happy times and some very sad times as well including Christmas and New Year's, my sister and her husband's wedding anniverary, seeing my niece and watching her behaviour transfrom from eating so much sugar over the course of three weeks, finding out I'll be an uncle by summertime, seeing all my aunts and uncles, cousin and grandfather, my dad's birthday and for those of you who follow his blog you will know what else I'm talking about. Most of all it was good to spend time with so much family- I don't even know how long it's been since we were able to spend so much time together with everyone there.

Visalia is a lot smaller and quieter than Singapore and after being away for three and half weeks I'm feeling a little overwhelmed at being back in this crowded, noisy city. I took a walk tonight to get dinner and there really are people just all over the place. I was also surprised to feel a little uncomfortable or consious about being caucasian surrounded by asians. I think these were feelings I had after first moving here and they should go away again quickly after I get used to this city life.

Phnom Penh

Towards the end of August I decided to fly to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, with a few of my friends to meet up with Joe- an old college friend who was out traveling around S.E. Asia for a few weeks. Actually Joe had been out to Singapore once already last year to visit and that time we took a trip to Thailand to see Bangkok and Phuket. This time I think Joe was much more adventurous and he went off on his own quite a bit. Before we met up with him in Phnom Penh he had already been to Koh Samui, Thailand; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and Siem Reap, Cambodia. As you can see in this picture below, he's a seasoned traveler, feeling at home in Asia.

Joe- blending in on the gritty streets of Phnom Penh. (note: with the guidebook in his left hand he's sure not to get lost)

This was the first time I'd been to Phnom Penh and really I've always had mix thoughts about visiting. It's reported as quite shocking even to those travelers who have seen Bangkok or Jakarta (as I had) because of it's unorganized, dirty, and crowded streets filled with beggars and cripples (from residual unexploded ordinance)- everywhere. Extreme poverty is something that can been seen all over the world and it's not easy to get used to, and it's almost unimaginable to see how people survive with almost nothing, living out their lives everyday in filth all in public view with hardly any privacy, something I've really taken for granted most of my life- just having somewhere to go (like a house) to go to get off the street. The city wasn't as bad as I had read about though and I thought some of the places I saw in India were much worse than this.

In my opinion Phnom Penh is not really not a tourist city in that there aren't many well known tourist attractions which I find somewhat strange since in the early 20th century before the Vietnam War and subsequent rule of the Khmer Rouge it was considered one of the most beautiful cities in S.E. Asia and known as the Paris of the East. During the war, the Khmer Rouge was an underestimated force even while fighting erupted and they littered the jungles with millions of land mines, many of which are still active. Following the American withdraw from Vietnam, and Cambodia, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge forces marched into the city in celebration. Shortly after, this the celebration ended and one of the known world's largest genocides began as he began the reassignment of everyone form the city to the country side where they were forced to work in the fields as slaves to establish his vision of an agrarian utopia. Almost anyone educated, anyone with glasses, or anyone found to listen to the radio or watch television were taken, tortured then killed. In total, nearly 2,000,000 people were executed by their fellow countrymen serving under the Khmer Rouge. Before this war, Cambodia had a flourishing pop music and culture scene- all of which was wiped out as all urban areas were evacuated. Even looking at the history of existing facts of what happened it's hard to believe or understand why this occurred. At some point momentum seems to have taken over and anyone serving in the military who opposed was also killed, few even knowing for sure why they were doing it but at the same time afraid to oppose for fear of being killed.

So now the state of Phnom Penh is a bit mixed. It's since been reoccupied by people and still growing into a busy city as people carve out livings from businesses but it's still establishing itself and maintains an undertone of a wild boom town. Booths to check your guns before entering bars or clubs weren't uncommon, neither was getting frisked (a real frisk by some serious looking dude, not like they do at the airport). Most of the recent tourism has been based on the Tuol Sleng genocide museum- a former school converted by the Khmer Rouge into a human processing center and torture site, trips to the killing fields where thousands were killed in the country side, or live shooting ranges where people could shoot anything from hand guns to tank cannons for a small price. I've heard the shooting ranges have more recently been toned down in attempts to curb Cambodia's image of a lawless place. I really had no desire to visit any of these places- not that I don't it's important to remember and respect what had happened but it's really depressing to see. Joe and my friend Patrick went to see the genocide museum and I think they both felt sick by the time they returned.
While it's hard to understand what had happened in Cambodia's past, it's also hard to understand other things that have been occurring more recently there as the billboards all over town and signs posted in most hotel rooms remind you that having sex with children is a punishable crime. Sex tourism, especially for underage children, had become common and more immediately attests to how sick, selfish and greedy people can be to take advantage of those in less fortunate situations than themselves- and it's the same greed causing men to sale their children into sexual slavery for money as the financiers and bankers who continued to get rich while knowing at some point their practices would collapse, sending us into the current world financial crisis. People can be very bad at times.

Despite not shooting any guns, visiting the genocide memorials or having sex with anyone including children I managed to have a memorable and mostly fun time during the two days we spent there. So- what else is there to do in a strange Asian city with some of the most dirty streets with some of the worst drivers around but to rent bikes and experience it. While Joe and Patrick went to see the genocide museum, Fal and I rented some bikes and took off to see the city.The bike ride route: We started somewhere near the city center and made a route to go south then come back up along a canal we saw on the map (turns out the canal looked much better on the map than in person). After heading up the canal we continued on to try to see the giant Beong Kak Lake... which though we heard was nice, I think it was better on the map as well since access to the lake shore was limited and we barely could even get a glimpse of the sun setting over it. Never-the-less we did get to see a lot of the city and experience riding in the traffic, soaking up the noise, dust and pollution. Phnom Penh drivers are noted to be very bad and the only rule of driving seemed to be "don't hit anything", and though the traffic also drives on the right side of the road (since it wasn't a British colony), you wouldn't necessarily notice it since say you had to go only a short distance you can just go ahead and drive on the left side rather than try to cross traffic- seriously there aren't any rules. Somehow it seems to work though and strangely I felt more comfortable on a bike in traffic there than I do in Singapore. The traffic is a mix of cars, trucks, pedestrians, bikes, scooters, tuk-tuks, and ox-drawn carts and stray dogs.
The canal had the most glassy... black water I've ever seen. Of course it takes a lot of pollution to make water like that. It really wasn't as nice as it looks in the picture... but as a source of flowing water it was of course a center of activity with housing and businesses built up around it the entire length.

the girl at the shop where we rented the bikes and her miniature designer dog the size of your hand. I was very surprised to see so many of this type of bred miniature dog around the city... somehow they seemed out of place but I guess people like what they like...

The Silver Pagoda in the royal palace complex, originally constructed with 5,000 silver tiles for the floor.

Touring the Central Market. This was pretty standard for a an Asian market. Though in the wet market I was surprised there were so many frogs and eels which must be fresh from the Mekong River.

Patrick enjoying some stuffed and skewered frogs cooked there at the market.

Later we saw just how fresh the frogs were... these were offered for sale- already skinned and beheaded... but not dead as they were still moving. I guess they must sale this many in one day... otherwise I have no idea why they would skin them all alive like that. Walking in these markets you get used to seeing beef, pork, poultry and fish butchered and laid out in the heat but this was more than slightly disturbing to me. At the top of the picture you can see the eels... yes they are alive as well.

Lots of shirts were available for purchase, too.

Our hotel was right along the Mekong River on Sisowath Quay. Around sunset, sitting at a cafe along the Riverside Boulevard on the Mekong, time really seems to slow down and it's easy to imagine what the city must have been like in it's prime so many years ago. There is still evidence of it in other parts of the city where some of the remaining French buildings are now being renovated, many of the turned into boutique hotels for the growing tourist influx.


Overlooking Riverside Boulevard to the Mekong from the hotel balcony at night and the next morning

An introspective looking tourist in a Phnom Penh cafe

Looking back on the trip there isn't any major thing we saw or activity we did that made the trip special or necessarily worth recommending others to go see the city. I would not normally recommend this trip as we did it- as the only destination, but I would definitely recommend it to see in addition to other sites in Cambodia- Siem Reap (and the temples near Angkor Wat) being by far the largest attraction. I think in general these kinds of trips have become my favorite since there is no agenda or itinerary- instead you can just go to live and explore for a few days with no pressure to finish everything or rush to see any one thing.

Also See Fal's pictures of Phnom Penh

Meet the New Neighbors

Walking home from work tonight I noticed a new sign up in the empty lot next door to my building. Construction has now officially begun on a new 7 story condo unit scheduled to open in 2012! ...and JUST when all the noise across the street was starting to die out at the new mall/condo high rise construction site. I'm hoping that since this new place isn't going to open until 2012 it means they won't be working on nights or weekends.

The signboard

Wilkie Regency (my place)in the background. That room with the light on is my living room so I'll have quite a good view of the construction process.

...and here's the view from my balcony. That building in the background is called Sophia Flats (it's in some of the other pictures I've posted from my place before as well)...and it IS haunted. I have a friend who used to live there in the top floor and he swears it's haunted. There used to be a HUGE tree with a canopy covering almost the whole empty lot. One day when he was still living there the owner cut it down in preparation of developing this site. Ever since that day my friend, James, said things got very strange and that's when he started noticing ghosts. He had a cat and it would sometimes freak out and start hissing at things in the corner, he's have people over and they'd often claim they felt some presence in one of the bedrooms, and he said once he saw a ladder he had leaning on the wall fall backwards just like some one pushed it...not like it just slid down the wall. It seems throughout Singapore there are a lot of ghost stories and a lot of people really believe them. A year later the developer died of cancer and the lot sat empty until now. That was more than 10 years ago.

taxi drivers

Walking home tonight I was surprised to be stopped by someone addressing me as ‘sir’ immediately after he said ‘excuse me’. I was first taken back by such courtesy which is so rarely exhibited here in Singapore especially to a stranger. There are the rare instances of it though. A few weeks back I was on the east west line of the MRT and it wasn’t a packed train but it was pretty full. I was standing since I normally stand on the train but all of the seats in the area were taken anyway. An old man came aboard and almost immediately a young spore stood up and offered the seat. I was really impressed that the boy gave up the seat since so many times you see kids sitting there texting on their phones or playing video games oblivious to anything else going on around them... much less give up their seat. I would think the man would even have given a slight smile or something like say 'thanks' to the boy but instead he just took the seat (It is possible I missed the subtlety of the gesture of thanks since I may not be trained to see it and was only expecting some type of Western thanks). It even made ME feel good just to be standing there which sounds strange! It seems like there is so little expression of thanks here and people don’t seem happy. This event demonstrated the kind of courtesy I’ve usually only observed on government posters posted in the cars and on the walls of the MRTs defining what ‘graciousness is’: offering up your seat to those who need it more than you, or maybe directing the elderly or those with too many shopping bags away from the escalator and into the elevator since it’s much more safe (I seriously learned this tip from one of the videos the play in the MRT about ‘MRT platform safety’…can you imagine: carrying too many shopping bags to ride an escalator safely!?). If these kinds of common courtesies were only put into action a fraction of the time this really would be a more wonderful and safe world! Back to the point: so, this guy said, ‘Excuse me, Sir. Do you know where Hooters is?’
I smiled inside as I simultaneously realized the group was both American and itching to go to Hooters… I figured they were on shore leave from a Navy boat in dock ( I later found out this was true and there is a big U.S. boat in dock here right now). “Oh, you want to go to Hooters?... ” “Yeah, it’s by the water, right?” I noticed we were next to some kind of water canal just off Orchard Road I had never noticed before. “Yeah, but not by this water….” It really was close enough to walk but I figured they would get lost and you want to walk into Hooters cool and collected with your game on, not all sweaty from a long walk … so I’ve heard. Instead I gave him directions to take the MRT since we were standing right by a station and it’s only one station away. He seemed convinced but the other acted like it would be too much trouble and he asked if it’s easier to take a cab… which it obviously is, it just didn’t occur to me to tell them to take a cab for some reason. Then he asked if they take a cab should he tell the driver to run the meter or get a fixed rate. I was literally stunned for a second from the question and I told him I had never even heard of negotiating a fixed rate in a cab here. It should be like a $6 cab ride to get them there I told him. Then he told me the cab drivers had picked them up at the U.S. base and told them he’d take them into town for $10 each! The only fixed rate cabs I know of here are the $35 fixed rate for the Mercedes limo cabs and that’s a rate to take you anywhere on the whole island. So these guys had put 4 guys in a normal cab and gave the driver $40 for what should have been like a $15 cab ride and since they didn’t know the difference they thought the driver was doing them a favor (actually this is common in Bangkok for cab drivers to do and I’ve done it before and you can negotiate a better rate sometimes but that’s Thailand and they’re Buddhists and here in Singapore you’re dealing with some penny mongering cab driver who only believes in making money and could care less about Karma or whatever else it is that makes Thai’s so nice…and it’s Singapore that’s supposedly the 1st would country and so civilized (in defense to the cab drivers, they do have to work like 6 hour shifts just to break even for the day, they keep working for another 6 to 8 hours so they can make some money)). It kills me that apparently all the other guys on their boat where doing it too because they thought they were getting a deal. Too bad the taxi drivers are conniving bastards. They must love it when the ships come into town. Even normally when you’re on the meter they will always test you to see if you know where you’re going or if you’re just some guy in town for a few days on a business trip in which case he’ll chose his own route which is always longer. And they know when you know they’re going the wrong way because they’ll all of a sudden look in disgust or dismay at their meter and tell you it should be less and give you a lower price… this has happened to both me and my other coworker from San Diego several times. My point of this entry is that I cannot believe how cheating some people can be. And cheating grunts in the armed services seems really low. They must do it all the time and they must love it when ships come in so they can make easy money.

Uncle

Well, I'm an uncle as of May 6th! Congratulations, Nathan and Michelle!
I don't technically have all the details yet and I don't want to intrude too much into their private lives, but in tribute I'm posting a few pictues so they can remember their peaceful days w/o B.

Easter 2006 ... trendy in black...

The night before Nathan's 30th birthday party. Ouch!...Look at those sparks fly. That's some heat! Ah, Youth!

Thanksgiving 2006. This is when the big announcement was made; however, even before Nathan broke the news to everyone I had a strong feeling I knew what was coming. If you look closely at Michelle's glass you'll notice that's soda instead of wine like in Nathan's. When someone's not drinking at a family gathering you know they must be expecting.

Seriously though, congratulations, Nathan and Michelle! I wish I could be there to see you both and my niece in person but I'm sure your hands will be full enough for a while without having to host me at your house any more than you have over the past few years. Thanks!

Oh, Mom... we don't really drink that much at family gatherings. I was just kind of joking.