So...Basically I'm back-blogged. I have a lot to say and I don't even know where to start.

The basics are that Jer was here until Friday - which included me and Matt going back to work and Jer exploring Singapore and then all of us meeting up for dinner in various locations around the country/city/island/town.

Matt and I hung out with friends Friday night, cleaned our house (we have a new mold problem - and it's so grossing me out), went to the mall, visited our friends who just had a beautiful baby girl, went out for my birthday drink (we found a pub down the street that has *good* beer for S$8!!!), I biked (more later), met up for lunch, swam, ironed, played settlers of catan and FINALLY ate some food that was made in our very own kitchen. It was a good weekend.

I guess I'll first talk about my birthday. I turned 30. I feel like that should be a really big milestone. I feel like I should freak out or something like that. I'm sure I had a bunch of expectations about how I wanted my life to be by 30...I guess what happened is that I NEVER expected to be living in Singapore and working at Moody's, so how can I really then explain any of my other expectations? I'm pretty sure that stopped that whole process.

I was trying to figure out how to celebrate it. I guess what I like most in life is friends. I always throw myself birthday parties, non-bachelorette parties, good-bye parties. I think very few people have really thrown me a party before, and I don't really mind doing it for myself - because I LOVE when all of my friends get together (one exception is when Matt and I got engaged, and we happened to be in Chicago right after that and it was my birthday...though I still might have asked Jo and Mike to have all of my friends over!). Anyways, I thought that I should probably celebrate with friends, but then I realized that I have three friends here, and what if they were busy? I also didn't give anyone any time to plan, since we had been in Thailand, so I decided to feel sorry for myself and do nothing (and really not even leave the house that whole day). I'm still not sure how I feel about it.

On to other things. I loved today. My friend Martin from the biking trip in Thailand came over to Bedok (yay for friends who will travel across the country to do fun things with you!). We walked to East Coast Park, rented bikes and biked to Changi Beach. It was about an hour ride to get there, and then we went to the end. We basically followed the beach around two sides of Singapore, went by the airport and ended up on the north side right near Malaysia. We biked back and then walked for about 40 minutes and met Matt at this Swiss bakery near-ish to our house. We had a truly Singaporean experience there.

I don't know if I'll be able to communicate this, but I'll try.
There's a set meal for $12.90 that includes a quiche, salad and soup (and tea).
Matt ordered that. He said that he would take water instead of tea.
When they charged him for the meal, they added up the quiche, salad, and soup separately, and it was more expensive than $12.90. He said that he should get charged for the set meal, but they said that he had refused the tea, so they have to charge him a la carte. So we said that he would pay for Martin's tea as part of his set. She said that we had already asked for separate checks, so that wouldn't work. NO flexibility out here!!

Also, I was out in the sun all day, and somehow I totally forgot to put on sunscreen. I am the reddest Melanie around. Not good for my life expectancy. Such is life on the equator.