Don't judge and Indian by her hair colo(u)r

My ex-co-worker (I have lots of those at this point) told me that in India, you don't really describe a person by how they look. In America we might say, "you know, the Indian woman with the long hair" or someone might describe Matt as "short, light brown hair, blue eyes, skinny, about six feet tall" (btw - the short described his hair, not his length). Anyways, Deeksha, the co-worker, said that people find other ways to describe people by their skin color, their hair color, their eye color, etc.

It was fun to have my parents in town. We/they toured on the week, and we relaxed a lot on the weekend. We ate a lot (did you get that from my dad's posting?!). They're in Thailand right now. Lucky them.

In other interesting news, Splinter has not come back. It's been 20 days.

Matt has become quite attracted to this little kitten in our complex. I'm sure I have written about her. There were two black and white kitties, and one that looked exactly like Splinter. They also had a mom. The kitten that looked like Splinter disappeared (aka died) a few months ago, and then when Splinter disappeared, the other kitten and the mom disappeared as well (hopefully not aka died). The remaining kitty is very helpless and very cute. Matt has taken to feeding her and watering her. She has developed a limp, so we took her to the vet tonight. They did an ex-ray on her little leg, and they said that it's broken at the top of the femur, and it's totally facing the wrong way. Poor kitty. They said we can amputate it or just leave her alone, and that in a few weeks she will learn to walk without it bothering her TOO much. I hope she feels better soon. They gave us some calcium stuff to squirt into her mouth. I don't want her living in our house though, and I WON'T give her a name, because that means I might love her, and then she will leave, and I don't think I can handle that again.

Also, Marla got married this weekend. I was really sad not to be there. It's so hard not to be at major events of people you love and grew up with! Sad. MAZAL TOV!!!

Happy Halloween. They don't really do that so much here, but Matt just saw a few kids going trick or treating. Thank god my dad left some m&ms in our apartment...

Guest Blogger - Sandeebeee

Melanie’s father is writing today.

Sue and I arrived in Singapore 6 days ago.
If Mel or Matt have given you an invitation to visit them do take them up on it! They have lots of room (compared to Manhattan) and things are very interesting here.
Some observations:

1. Everyone told us to fly first class. We didn’t. We survived. Easily. Lots of hours, with a rushed change of planes in Tokyo. Sue could’ve practiced her Japanese, but didn’t.
2. Some things are expensive here. Our suitcases were loaded with requested peanut butter and a ton of books.
3. Starbucks all over, but Sue is enjoying local coffee shops. 1/5 the cost and just as much caffeine.
4. Melanie has written about how well the country works. Clean, safe. Don’t need car. Is that really English they’re speaking?
5. Have visited lots of places here. Saw Matt’s workplace—no photos allowed for security reasons. Very impressive. Visited Asian Civilizations Museum—excellent. Lots of malls—way to stay cool and see things. One huge mall even has multiple theatres with performances by internationally acclaimed entertainers. David Copperfield just canceled. Go figure.
6. Went to Pulau Ubin. (Melanie probably wrote about this). Natural beauty island not far away. Saw monkeys, wild pigs, neat fish, huge lizards. We hiked, rather than rent broken down bikes.
7. Spotting lots of iPod ear buds on the street. Jer, hold APPL.
8. Have eaten in many different restaurants. Great Indian food. “Street food” (from hawker stalls) very tasty and amazingly cheap. We order by looking at pictures because we don’t know what any of the names mean. Lots of variety. Dinner for 4 for less than $20. Yet in a nicer waterfront restaurant a soft drink is over $4 US. Same restaurant/bar priced beer based on what time you buy it. Four different prices from $5 to $14 for a pint. Alcohol taxed heavily.
9. I bought 89 cents worth of bananas and was only charged 85 cents. To eliminate pennies they round DOWN.
10. Soft drinks available in cans and on street for about 60 cents US. We’re enjoying the lime juice. Tried sugar cane juice. Some drink places have soft drinks for 20 cents less if you get them WITH ice.
11. I had read about the foul smelling fruit called durian. Once, when I was really warm I saw a popsicle for sale that was durian flavor. I decided to take a chance—how bad could it be? I had 2 bites. Couldn’t try any more. Burped once per minute for the next 3 hours. Tasted like diesel fuel. Melanie says it’s an acquired taste.
12. Lots of dental offices here. Prominent signs offering whitening in all of them. Have seen many people missing several teeth—especially older, poor-looking people.
13. Played (rooftop) tennis twice with Melanie. Each time, the heat shortened our outing. She’s getting good. She tells me Matt’s getting amazingly good. Sue’s resting her knee, getting ready for upcoming Thailand trek.
14. Just outside our condo door is the huge swimming pool. Very refreshing.
15. Matt and Mel are living very “green”. They rarely use their air conditioners. (Sue keeps repositioning their fans to fully cover the chair she’s sitting in.) They shower turning the water on and off intermittently. (Their showers have “flash” hot water heaters.) They turn off electrical transformers for devices not being used. Before I left home, I turned off my cable modem so my neighbor would realize she’s been using my internet WIFI.

All in all, very interesting. As I’m finishing this, (watching game 4 of the World Series), Sue’s talking to cousin Judy. Sue says she loves the way our kids have adapted to living here. And then she adds, “it’s really hot.”

B'holtzes in Singapore

First, I have to give credit to Ruthie for giving me the idea to throw an "e" in B'holtzes. I always apostrophied, but I like this better.

Sue and Sandy arrived on Tuesday night late. I had a rough time, since two people from my work life and I went out for drinks and dinner (and drinks) before they got here. I had woken up at 5:45 to go to work, and we got home from the airport at 2:00 am. I would have been complaining more if my parents hadn't just flown around the world for over 24 hours to come visit me.

They arrived in jolly moods from Jeremy and Terese's wedding in Cali. They had a great time, and they saw many people that Matt and I love. We were so sad not to be there. We were also thankful that the Malibu fires didn't displace their wedding, since they are/were raging right where the wedding was - five hours after it ended. So terrible.

Yesterday I took the day off of work, and we ran all over Singapore. We first checked out the local Starbucks (which was the most important thing in my mom's life, but she later realized that local coffee is as good as or better than her beloved Starbucks). We went to my new job (which starts in Dec - I'll write more about it another time) to drop off some papers, and then we walked down Orchard Road to get some very good dim sum and see all of the malls.

The dim sum was very good.

We then took the MRT to go see Matt at his office. He took us to the 37th floor and then the 18th floor and we could see a few views of the city. We then went to one of the hawker centres and got a bunch of fruit. We walked and saw a Chinese temple, Chinatown, Clarke Quay, lots of areas. We ended up in Little India, where we saw lots of colors, since everything is decorated for Deepavali (Nov 8th). They tried roti prata, which is a Singaporean speciality, and then we had super good food for dinner.

Today they ran all over town again. My mom said that she will guest blog this weekend, so she'll write more.

Tonight we met for a Singapore Sling, which is a SUPER sweet drink, at the Raffles Hotel which is just a gorgeous building. It is soooo beautiful.

Then we had Laksa, which is another Singapore specialty - we have no idea what's in it, but I think I wrote about it back in August or July. It was good. Then we tried some chicken rice. That was really good too. Now we're crashing...Pictures soon.

No word on Splinter. :(

Don't Say Anything at All

My mom always said - "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."

I would suppose that's why I haven't blogged in the last almost-week. It's been a rough week. Work is pretty rough (though I really try to not write about that at all, since you never know who reads what), and I've been really down about the cat. Her presence in our lives made me really happy. I loved coming home, and as I was walking to our apartment, she would trot up next to me and then run ahead up the stairs and wait for me to open the door to our apartment. Every morning, I would open the door to get the paper, and she would run inside. She was such a cuddly, sweet, loveable cat. :(

Basically, we haven't seen her for a week and a half (Thursday morning LAST week). At first we were sure she had been taken, because there were signs up that they were collecting stray cats. Matt called the management office, SPCA, and a couple of companies that do that sort of thing, and we pretty much confirmed that they had not come to our complex, and that she hadn't been taken away. Matt even went to SPCA to check. He has emailed pictures to different places too.

We heard that she might be in heat, off having sex somewhere, or she might be exploring the world. We hope that she decides to come back and wasn't taken away...

We met Ruthie's friend, Rachel, and her two sisters and one sister's friend (make sense?). They were all great, and we had a fun time with them last night.

We played tennis today - Matt WON again!! Bad news...

Mom and dad are coming on Tuesday night, so that will be fun.
Our house is clean, so that makes me happy too.

Christin and Lee Fong's Wedding

Last night we went to Christin and Lee Fong's wedding in Johor Bahru, which is right across the water from Singapore in Malaysia. It's seriously like Windsor to Detroit.

Matt was a "brother" in the wedding, so he actually was there for the whole of Sunday, which sounds like it was quite an experience. Lee Fong is Chinese, and grew up on JB, and Christian is Filipino and grew up in Athens, Georgia. The wedding was a Chinese wedding.

First, Matt went to the Gate Crashing Ceremony, which is like the Jewish B'deken. Christian and his brothers showed up at LF's house, and they had to do a bunch of tasks before he could get let in. Here sister and friends were "keeping the gates." It sounds kind of like Double Dare. They had to hit some badminton strokes, they had to put on a certain pair of underwear, they had to put on lipstick and kiss each other...it all sounds pretty hilarious. Finally, Christian gets let in, and he got to see LF in all of her beauty (she's really cute), and he had tea with her family. That meant they were married.

I took a cab to the hotel there with a few of the SAIS (Matt's grad school) people. We ended up staying by the pool and talking and playing euchre for about six hours. We also got to watch Missouri and Oklahoma, which was a pretty exciting game.

Anyways, the wedding was a mad feast of crazy amounts of food. We had about eight courses. It was really nice - they had friends there from Hong Kong, Bangkok, Borneo, Jakarta, and people came in from the States...Lots of SAISers.

At Jewish weddings people dance. At this wedding it was all singing - karaoke city. People were singing with background music, and it was awesome. They were no joke - really good voices! They had two emcees, and there were even a few slide shows.

They also do this thing where everyone puts their glasses up and together and calls yam seng. But they don't say it like that. They say it like, "yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam seng." And the "yam" is really loud and sometimes painful.

A highlight for me is when I went to wash my hands in the bathroom, and this woman came out and said, "be careful - there's a man in there." There was an old man puking in the women's bathroom. Did I mention there was a lot of alcohol at this wedding?

Congratulations to Christian and Lee Fong! Check out photos here.

In SUPER sad news - we are pretty sure that they took our cat away. It seems as though the complex called an extermination company to come and collect the cats, and we haven't seen her since Thursday morning. I'm REALLY sad about that. She was really a part of our family, and she made coming home so nice and exciting. I miss her. Matt's going to call the company tomorrow and see if there's any chance she's still alive, but I seriously doubt it. :(

Pontevecchio=Casafina

My grandparents live in a hilarious neighborhood. It's one of those in Florida with a gate, all of the mailboxes are the same, they have a certain number of trees allowed in their front yard, etc. I'm sure you've seen them. When we go there, it makes me laugh. Each complex has its theme, and none of them has a personality. My grandparents' is called Pontevecchio - yup, just like the bridge in Italy.

We live in basically the same thing in Singapore. Ours is called Casafina. I had posted a few pictures before on this post. It has palm trees. They're real, but they don't look like they are, and they're certainly not primary growth forest. The whole place is cleaned each day, and there is never any litter (other than the lambchop). We have at least three pools, over 20 fountains or places of public running water, and we have strict rules for the tennis court (but not as strict as Florida - and no angry 70 year olds enforcing them). It was all digestible until last week.

Last week, they put up a SUPER tacky sign on the guard house that reads, "Casafina" in white neon lights - arched like cheap word-art. It's really ugly.

In other news - I'm really scared the Splinter has left this world. She hasn't come to visit us since breakfast Thursday morning. In fact, I didn't see ANY cats in our complex for two full days. When I left to go out this evening I saw some of the cats had returned, but it's now been more than two days, and I really hope she's okay. I hope that they didn't take all of the cats and kill them. It would be okay if they took them all and killed them - except Splinter.

In addition, Matt and some friends went to Johor Bahru right across the border (it's like Windsor to Detroit) for Christian's wedding. Right when they left, I turned on the dining room light, and I heard a pop, and now none of the lights are working. I'm writing by dim lamp light. The fuse box is in Maria's (the imaginary maid) room, but we have a desk, a kitchen table, a tv stand and about four other things in between me and the fuse box. I think I will wait until Matt comes back.

Yiddapore

I had a meeting with my President, and the first thing I asked before we started was, "do you know what chutzpa means?" She didn't. I told her that's basically the definition of what I was doing...

I asked the other girls at work if they knew what chutzpa meant, and they didn't.

Then I read Time Out Singapore, and it mentioned schlep - TWICE - and it mentioned nosh once. No one at work knew those words either. Who's writing this magazine? Are Jewish words infiltrating a country in Asia surrounded by other countries who hate Jews?

Everyone IS out to get me!!!

Maybe it's because I'm the grandchild of Holocaust survivors.
Maybe it's because I'm the daughter of the child of Holocaust survivors.
Maybe it's because I myself am paranoid.

Whatever the reason, I'm paranoid. I'm pretty sure that people are trying to cheat me, rob me, and get me into trouble - left and right.

When I'm driving in a cab in a city I don't know, I follow on a map.
When we first moved into our fifth floor apartment - in the back of a brownstone, in NYC, I wouldn't leave the windows open during the day.
I check all bills and credit card statements with the assumption that they're trying to get money out of me that I don't actually owe.

It's kind of my personal goal to always stop someone from cheating me.
The truth is that it almost never actually happens.

When Matt and I first met, this was one of our biggest problems. It hasn't really improved. (Luckily I'm not religious anymore, so now it can move up to number two or three).

I arrived in Singapore, and I saw that Asians don't wear their shoes in their houses. Our apartment, as most do, has a shoe rack between the main door and the main gate. I was really nervous to put my keens there. I was moving from NYC, and we are now living on the first floor (and I'm paranoid - see above -), and you want me to leave my expensive sandals outside for the world to take? Matt made super fun of me, and finally, I gave in - only so that when they got stolen, I could tell him "I told you so."

They didn't get stolen. I then began to trust the world. I really felt like nothing in Singapore could touch me - it's so safe here! We even have security in our complex!

Until...Matt and I went to play tennis on Monday night, and he noticed that his brand new, white as white, beautiful tennis shoes were STOLEN! They're totally gone!

I didn't tell him, "I told you so," but that's mostly because when your stuff is stolen, it never really helps when your wife says that. The building management assured us they would "get to the bottom of this." I'm sure they will...(yeah right)

In other news:
Matt and I DID play tennis on Monday night (he wore old shoes), and he WON! He beat me 6-4. I'm pretty worried that his win was the beginning of a new era in our relationship.

Lots of people are pregnant. They're coming out like migrating geese. Remember in August when five babies were born within a week or so? Well, it's going to happen again in April. My friend Yael is due somewhere there, Shana is due a week later, and then Emily (Seth's wife) is due three days later. Why does everyone seem to conceive at the same time? I wonder if there was a study about which months in which years had the most births. I can say that most of my friends (born in 1978) have summer birthdays. (Except Marla who is turning THIRTY tomorrow!!! - HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!).

Melaka

Matt and I went to Melaka this weekend with two friends - Arkadi and Margo. Arkadi you might remember from my diving certification trip, and Margo and Matt were in Peace Corps together.

First - a little prelude. I manage the membership database for the progressive Jewish community in S'pore. I got all of the updated membership data (in hard copy) this week, and I spent about six hours going through all of the forms, updating addresses, marking who has paid, organizing the data afterwards and making it look beautiful. Friday night, around 11:30, I finally finished, and I sent it off the the important people. Then, I couldn't sleep. I got out of bed around 12:30, and I came back to make the spreadsheet even prettier. When I opened it, it had reverted back to what I had on TUESDAY, before I had done any of the work. So, I stayed up until 3:30 finishing that again (it was faster the second time). Somewhere in the middle of that, two weird things happened. First, I started eating some dry corn flakes. Splinter was really curious and wouldn't leave me alone (she doesn't usually care about the food that we eat). I had put some in a bowl, which was on the floor, and when there were just a few left, I let her smell it, and then she ate them. We have only fed her cat food, and when we try to give her fruits and veggies, she's never interested. I thought her crunching on corn flakes was really cute...until she became uncute very quickly. She brought a lizard into the living room, put it down, and then she began torturing it - she would hit it, and then when it would run away, she would corner it, or just bug it. Finally, she ended up cutting off the tail (which was going nuts, even after its separating from the body), and then she chased the rest of it around the house for a very long time. This was really not cute.

Anyways, after one hour of sleep (I couldn't fall asleep until six!!!), Matt and I got up to go to our luxury bus to Melaka. We were in huge, wide seats that leaned all the way back. Most normal tour buses have 54 seats in them (yes, I have led trips before). Ours had 24. Though our first bus had more, since it was double decker. We went smoothly through the border and ended up in Melaka around 1.

Melaka is a small city that is on the west "coast" of main land Malaysia. It was about four hours on the bus. Basically, what I understand is that it used to be a major thoroughfare, but at this point, it's just sort of a place for tourists, and a place that they're starting to make a bit nicer. It is on the water, but there isn't yet anything of interest on the water, so we didn't spend much time around there. It has a nice river runnign up the middle of it, and we did enjoy that.

We stayed at a place called the Baba House, which is an old house - sort of colonial architecture with amazing Chinese woodwork. Our rooms didn't have windows, but we just pretended that the curtains were just drawn really tight (and they did have air con). We ate a lot (though that was challenging, since there's still a week left of Ramadan). We walked around everywhere, and that was my favorite. The buildings are just so interesting. The Portuguese had the city from the 1500s until the 1700s or something like that (no time for Googling right now), and then there were Dutch and British that came along also - so there is a lot of European influence, but it also looks amazingly beautifully Asian. We saw two really old mosques - one from the 1720s and one from the 1740s. We saw a church from the 1500s, a replica of a palace that was there in the 1400s (wood and no nails), and lots of windy roads. It wasn't the most pedestrian friendly place, but we did all live.

I'll upload a few pictures, but click here for the full album.

Jewish Thoughts (and a Lizard)

Random thoughts...

I went to shul tonight, and I realized that the holidays this year totally passed me by. They're over now, and I went to shul three times for Rosh Hashana, for Yom Kippur a lot, and that's it (though three shabbats since RH). I barely know it was sukkot, and I didn't eat in a sukkah let alone even have a fake sukkot meal (like we did in NY both years). It's the first time in my life since I have started caring about these holidays that I really didn't do them. It kind of makes me sad.

I realized that having a Friday night/Saturday afternoon shabbat life really added to my social life. Even when I was totally exhausted, I still knew that I would be social and hang out with nice people on Friday night and/or Saturday afternoon. Now, I'm totally exhausted on week nights, and SO tired on Friday nights, and that basically leaves Saturday night (and we know what happened with that last weekend...) and Sunday. I really miss Shabbat social opportunities.

I went to the Ashkenazi service tonight. It was really great, and the people were superb. That's good news.

I was sitting at my desk at work yesterday, and I felt something in my skirt. I then felt it move (it was rubbery and long and thin). Then I furiously shook out my skirt and my body, and a six inch lizard went skittering away. It was the grossest thing ever. I kept shivering all day thinking about it.

Splinter had a sleep over in our apartment last night. When I woke up she had a bit of a pani-meow, and Matt said, "Oh, that's where she was."

Seven to Eight

Phone numbers in the US have seven digits. A phone number rolls off with a rhythm. I'm pretty comfortable with that rhythm - I've had it my whole life (though with cell phones now, we have a ten digit rhythm, often, but it's still a comfortable rhythm for me).

In Singapore we have eight digits. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to say 01-23-45-67 or 0123-4567 or 01-234-567. I don't know the rhythm, and I think that different people say them different ways. Eight digits is just too much.

Cohabitating

I'm not talking about living with Matt. That's old news at this point.

I'm talking about the roacher who was sitting on my couch when I came home this evening. It's the same roacher who ran away from my broom and dustpan, and rather than running OUTSIDE, ran further inside the apartment and is now lurking in the bookshelves! How long should you spend looking for a lost cockroach in your bookshelves? I swear I used that broom handle to move each and every book to the side, but I have no idea where it went. It has been making my stomach uneasy (and I'm still recovering from the weekend...), so I decided to change my frame of reference. I decided that rather than looking for this guy to kill, I will simply accept that we are cohabitating (for 20 minutes until I finish my dinner and start hunting again).