I learnt a new word today. A guy at our local office read my blog and informs me that the correct word that I should have used is 'Lady-boy'. And they are quite common, according to him. Anyway, I havn't seen any more Lady-boys after that first day, so either they are not that common or they go to bed before midnight which is when I have been getting off work.
Another new word : Can-eh. This means Yes. If you ask someone if something can be done they reply "Can-eh". That means, 'Yes it can'. To emphatically say "Sure!" you say it twice like "Can-eh Can-eh'. And if you don't care if you do it or not (As in, we could go out for dinner or not - I'm OK either way), then you say "Can also Can-eh, Can-no also Can-eh". That's Singlish, Go figure!
Brazillian food for lunch. They have these meat waiters who carry big chunks of barbequed meat to your table and carve some on to your plate. They keep getting different kinds of meat and even some grilled pineapple. The food is excellent and I am stuffed. Dinner is ordered from McDonalds as we work late again. Singapore cows don't taste any different from American cows - my Big Mac tastes the same. I somehow expected the burger to be smaller like everything else here. BTW, one can see all the other big brands here too - Starbucks, Burger King, Borders - I can see all of them and a few more.
Work is satisfying. The project that I am working on is physically locked up in a steel box for security. They have had a special steel box made which they secure to a pillar with a steel cable and a padlock. I am flaterred and take a picture. It's feels nice when your work is respected. My bubble bursts as I have a thought that frightens me - Will someone think of locking me up too?
My flight leaves tomorrow and I am longing for home. No sleep even when I get back though - we are going to a Journey concert up near Portland on Sunday so its going to be another late night.
More later ...
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Fish Fry and Fish Therapy
Friday morning and I am all set to go. Calvin is more excited by my new Chevrolet Malibu that I rented from Hertz. He also wants to know what car I will get when I get back. I arrive in Eugene and find myself in the midst of ducks the team is on its way to a game somewhere. My flight is delayed and I have to wait it out. It finally takes off at I make it to SFO with 20 mins to spare to catch my next flight. I run to the international terminal and am the last one to board the flight. 'Your luggage is not going to make it' the attendant informs me. Great!
It's a long flight to Singapore. 11 Hours to Seoul, a one hour break and another 6 hour flight. Singapore Airlines has cleaned up their act. Nice plane, lots of leg room, good food, individual TV monitors, excellent service - I am impressed. The attendant was right. I end up at the hotel without my baggage but richer vy $120. The bag arrives later in the day, delivered to my room. It's not a bad deal, when I think about it; $120 for lazing around in a bathrobe all day.
Lots of things are different in Singapore. I open the wrong door of the cab. The cars are right hand drive here and the driver of the cab looks at me wide eyed as I yank open his door - he thought I wanted to hijack his car! I also involuntarily brace myself as he does a fast turn into the left side of the road and I find myself wishing that I had sat in the back seat instead. I have been away from home too long; I am forgetting the basic skills of driving in Asia - it's about keeping your nerves. The hotel is nice and I sleep off my jet lag with a little help from Mr. Walker - Mr. Johnny Walker. He's a real helpful guy when you want to sleep; or for any other problem, for that matter. In the evening I go for a walk and come across an old Chinese gentleman who advertises the best foot massages in the world. I watch from the window as he works his magic on a middle aged woman. The look of sheer bliss on her face is enough to convince me that he may indeed be what his ad professes. I have a fetish for foot massages. For years, I have been trying to convince my family - first my wife and then my son - that it's good karma to give out free foot maggages. Either they don't care for the karma or they see right through me. I suspect it is the latter though both of them are too decent to tell me that to my face. I pay the man $40 for 30 minutes and I am walking on air when I leave. I don't need much help from Mr. Walker to fall back to sleep.
My new find also shows me another place where I can get a unique kind of foot treatment. Fish therapy is where you stick your feet into a tank full of fish and let them bite the dead skin and dirt off. I go back the next day with Shreekant. We change into shorts which are provided by the establishment and tentatively dip a toe into the water. The fish are on it like a flash. We put our whole feet in and there are scores of fish on it in a couple of seconds. It's ticklish as hell and I am laughing uncontrollably. There are a few more people there and soon we are all laughing - laughter therapy comes as a free add on, I guess.
I see evidence everywhere of what a fine city Singapore is (to repeat an old joke). $500 fine for littering, $200 fine for smoking and even $300 for 'urinating in the elevator'. I'm not joking, I really saw the sign. Does it mean that it is so common a practice that one needs a special fine for it? I was told by a friend just before I left that the girls in Singapore have a lot of 'other' skills. I don't know what she actually meant by that and she didn't elaborate. Well, so far, the girls here look the same as everywhere else in the world. Or maybe she meant that there are a lot of 'others' here, others as in 'Ladies, Gentlemen and Others'. I saw a bunch of them today and they were trying to solicit cash from passers by. I cross the street in a hurry - I have nothing against them; it's just that I like them better from across the street.
Work takes over. We leave everyday at 9 in the morning and return late at night. Twice I go out for Indian dinners; I'm eating dum biriyani after a long time and it feels good. Lunch is usually Chinese with the people from work - chicken
rice is a particular favorite until I discover that it could be 'anything' rice such as sweet and sour pork rice, lemon chicken rice or even barbequed pork ribs rice. Hopefully, we will be able to take Friday afternoon off and go see
some signts. Right now, it's not looking good. I will be working until it's time to leave for the airport :-(
More tomorrow...
It's a long flight to Singapore. 11 Hours to Seoul, a one hour break and another 6 hour flight. Singapore Airlines has cleaned up their act. Nice plane, lots of leg room, good food, individual TV monitors, excellent service - I am impressed. The attendant was right. I end up at the hotel without my baggage but richer vy $120. The bag arrives later in the day, delivered to my room. It's not a bad deal, when I think about it; $120 for lazing around in a bathrobe all day.
Lots of things are different in Singapore. I open the wrong door of the cab. The cars are right hand drive here and the driver of the cab looks at me wide eyed as I yank open his door - he thought I wanted to hijack his car! I also involuntarily brace myself as he does a fast turn into the left side of the road and I find myself wishing that I had sat in the back seat instead. I have been away from home too long; I am forgetting the basic skills of driving in Asia - it's about keeping your nerves. The hotel is nice and I sleep off my jet lag with a little help from Mr. Walker - Mr. Johnny Walker. He's a real helpful guy when you want to sleep; or for any other problem, for that matter. In the evening I go for a walk and come across an old Chinese gentleman who advertises the best foot massages in the world. I watch from the window as he works his magic on a middle aged woman. The look of sheer bliss on her face is enough to convince me that he may indeed be what his ad professes. I have a fetish for foot massages. For years, I have been trying to convince my family - first my wife and then my son - that it's good karma to give out free foot maggages. Either they don't care for the karma or they see right through me. I suspect it is the latter though both of them are too decent to tell me that to my face. I pay the man $40 for 30 minutes and I am walking on air when I leave. I don't need much help from Mr. Walker to fall back to sleep.
My new find also shows me another place where I can get a unique kind of foot treatment. Fish therapy is where you stick your feet into a tank full of fish and let them bite the dead skin and dirt off. I go back the next day with Shreekant. We change into shorts which are provided by the establishment and tentatively dip a toe into the water. The fish are on it like a flash. We put our whole feet in and there are scores of fish on it in a couple of seconds. It's ticklish as hell and I am laughing uncontrollably. There are a few more people there and soon we are all laughing - laughter therapy comes as a free add on, I guess.
I see evidence everywhere of what a fine city Singapore is (to repeat an old joke). $500 fine for littering, $200 fine for smoking and even $300 for 'urinating in the elevator'. I'm not joking, I really saw the sign. Does it mean that it is so common a practice that one needs a special fine for it? I was told by a friend just before I left that the girls in Singapore have a lot of 'other' skills. I don't know what she actually meant by that and she didn't elaborate. Well, so far, the girls here look the same as everywhere else in the world. Or maybe she meant that there are a lot of 'others' here, others as in 'Ladies, Gentlemen and Others'. I saw a bunch of them today and they were trying to solicit cash from passers by. I cross the street in a hurry - I have nothing against them; it's just that I like them better from across the street.
Work takes over. We leave everyday at 9 in the morning and return late at night. Twice I go out for Indian dinners; I'm eating dum biriyani after a long time and it feels good. Lunch is usually Chinese with the people from work - chicken
rice is a particular favorite until I discover that it could be 'anything' rice such as sweet and sour pork rice, lemon chicken rice or even barbequed pork ribs rice. Hopefully, we will be able to take Friday afternoon off and go see
some signts. Right now, it's not looking good. I will be working until it's time to leave for the airport :-(
More tomorrow...
The Visa
There have been numerous requests for me to start blogging again, so here goes. Apparantly people enjoy what I write, imagine that! But I digress; this blog is about my trip to Singapore( As an aside, I never seem to be able to blog from the comfort of my own home, but do quite well in far away hotel rooms).
This trip was planned way back in April, but for various reasons that we will not delve into here, it was repeatedly put off. Then in September, it suddenly becomes imperitive that I travel ASAP. And this is after I have numerous things scheduled, including but not limited to my soccer refereeing and my dear niece's visit. I resign myself to my fate and start looking into what is required to obtain a Visa to Singapore. Quite a lot, it turns out and by the time I have it all ready, it is way too late to mail it in and hope for it to be back in time. Well, there is no time to mail it in. But there are many ways to skin a cat. I decide that the only way to make the whole thing work is to drive. I call Nagendran and he is game to go the distance. We set out at about 8 on Thursday night but have to spend an hour in finding a Kinko that was open for a prepaid FedEx envelope. Departure from Corvallis is finally at 9 PM.
It's been quite some time since I have done an 'all nighter' and I'm wondering if this old body is up to it. Bear in mind that this whole week, my day has started at 4:25 which is when the bedside alarm goes off. Don't ask me why it's 4:25 and not 4:30 - thats just the way it's been for many months now and one does not change stuff without understanding the implications fully (unless one is in management, of course). We drive on into the night, stopping many times along the way for coffee and once in a dark stretch of highway to look at the stars. I never fail to be amazed by the number of stars that you can see on a clear night if one is away from the city lights. One begins to understand what 'as numerous as the stars' really means. Traffic is light until we reach San Franscisco and the last 50 miles takes us about 3 hours. The original plan was to leave at 6, reach SFO at 2, find a hotel and sleep until 8. Well we reached the Consulate at 9:00 AM; looking on the bright side, we saved on the hotel; and that's in line with the new 'cost saving' mantra!
Parking in downtown San Franscisco is impossible. So we pay a valet $10 to park for us. Well spent, if you ask me. We get our first bit of luck - we are parked right next to the Consulate. But first things first - we need to find a restroom. We start with the closest which is Starbucks, and then move on to Subway, Walgreens and a few more. We look in maybe ten places and find only one thing in commin : No public restrooms. We are gettng desperate. Nagendran asks me what the fine is for going in public and whether it will qualify for reimbursement as we are on a business trip. I don't comment as I don't know. Anyway, I don't imagine that it would be easy; it would require a a long written justification at the very least. The last one on the block is the San Franscisco Soup Company and we reluctantly go in. The soup is passable and the sandwitch is downright bad, but heaven be praised, the restrooms are clean! I am forever a fan of the San Franscisco Soup Company (though one does wonder about the soup base).
The Consulate is housed on the 24th floor along with a bunch of other offices. Somehow, I thought consulates were imposing buildings with security guards; but maybe those are embassies. It seems that my paperwork has a lot of things missing. A few calls back to the office gets a letter faxed. Then I find that my precious FedEx envelope does not work. The website may say it does, but the lady at the counter says it doesn't and she rules! She intently scrutinises my application and informs be that my given name and surname are interchanged. I tell her that it's my name and that it's been this way for as long as I can remember. She thinks different and I have to write a letter certifying that my name is indeed my name and that it is in the right order. I say a silent prayer my parents didn't think like her - I would have had to spend a lifetime thinking backwards. Isn't it strange how high handed average people become when they are put in positions of power. The higher the power, the more the high handedness - but that's politics and let's not go there.
The last task is to find a post office, which is conveniently located about 8 blocks away. It's about 12:30 by the time we are done and we start on the long drive home. It takes us about 12 hours and I am back home a little past midnight. It's taken around 27 Hours and 1300 miles - thats 50 miles an hour on average for the whole trip. The math doesn't seem right - we must have been over the limit! Now all thats left is to wait to see if my passport makes it back in time. The monach at the counter says 5 business days; I try to turn on my charm but it is wasted. At last she relents and says that she will do it in four. This means that I should get my passport back on Thursday; my flight out is on Friday morning.
The dragon does not always breathe fire, it seems. My passport makes it back a day early and I am all set!
This trip was planned way back in April, but for various reasons that we will not delve into here, it was repeatedly put off. Then in September, it suddenly becomes imperitive that I travel ASAP. And this is after I have numerous things scheduled, including but not limited to my soccer refereeing and my dear niece's visit. I resign myself to my fate and start looking into what is required to obtain a Visa to Singapore. Quite a lot, it turns out and by the time I have it all ready, it is way too late to mail it in and hope for it to be back in time. Well, there is no time to mail it in. But there are many ways to skin a cat. I decide that the only way to make the whole thing work is to drive. I call Nagendran and he is game to go the distance. We set out at about 8 on Thursday night but have to spend an hour in finding a Kinko that was open for a prepaid FedEx envelope. Departure from Corvallis is finally at 9 PM.
It's been quite some time since I have done an 'all nighter' and I'm wondering if this old body is up to it. Bear in mind that this whole week, my day has started at 4:25 which is when the bedside alarm goes off. Don't ask me why it's 4:25 and not 4:30 - thats just the way it's been for many months now and one does not change stuff without understanding the implications fully (unless one is in management, of course). We drive on into the night, stopping many times along the way for coffee and once in a dark stretch of highway to look at the stars. I never fail to be amazed by the number of stars that you can see on a clear night if one is away from the city lights. One begins to understand what 'as numerous as the stars' really means. Traffic is light until we reach San Franscisco and the last 50 miles takes us about 3 hours. The original plan was to leave at 6, reach SFO at 2, find a hotel and sleep until 8. Well we reached the Consulate at 9:00 AM; looking on the bright side, we saved on the hotel; and that's in line with the new 'cost saving' mantra!
Parking in downtown San Franscisco is impossible. So we pay a valet $10 to park for us. Well spent, if you ask me. We get our first bit of luck - we are parked right next to the Consulate. But first things first - we need to find a restroom. We start with the closest which is Starbucks, and then move on to Subway, Walgreens and a few more. We look in maybe ten places and find only one thing in commin : No public restrooms. We are gettng desperate. Nagendran asks me what the fine is for going in public and whether it will qualify for reimbursement as we are on a business trip. I don't comment as I don't know. Anyway, I don't imagine that it would be easy; it would require a a long written justification at the very least. The last one on the block is the San Franscisco Soup Company and we reluctantly go in. The soup is passable and the sandwitch is downright bad, but heaven be praised, the restrooms are clean! I am forever a fan of the San Franscisco Soup Company (though one does wonder about the soup base).
The Consulate is housed on the 24th floor along with a bunch of other offices. Somehow, I thought consulates were imposing buildings with security guards; but maybe those are embassies. It seems that my paperwork has a lot of things missing. A few calls back to the office gets a letter faxed. Then I find that my precious FedEx envelope does not work. The website may say it does, but the lady at the counter says it doesn't and she rules! She intently scrutinises my application and informs be that my given name and surname are interchanged. I tell her that it's my name and that it's been this way for as long as I can remember. She thinks different and I have to write a letter certifying that my name is indeed my name and that it is in the right order. I say a silent prayer my parents didn't think like her - I would have had to spend a lifetime thinking backwards. Isn't it strange how high handed average people become when they are put in positions of power. The higher the power, the more the high handedness - but that's politics and let's not go there.
The last task is to find a post office, which is conveniently located about 8 blocks away. It's about 12:30 by the time we are done and we start on the long drive home. It takes us about 12 hours and I am back home a little past midnight. It's taken around 27 Hours and 1300 miles - thats 50 miles an hour on average for the whole trip. The math doesn't seem right - we must have been over the limit! Now all thats left is to wait to see if my passport makes it back in time. The monach at the counter says 5 business days; I try to turn on my charm but it is wasted. At last she relents and says that she will do it in four. This means that I should get my passport back on Thursday; my flight out is on Friday morning.
The dragon does not always breathe fire, it seems. My passport makes it back a day early and I am all set!
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