The Singapore Squatter

I have been pondering toilets a lot lately. I think that's because my stomach has been a mess, and I have been building quite an intimate relationship with them, but whatever...

So - as most people know (and I'm sure I wrote this before), many toilets here are squatters. Personally, I prefer the squatter over the toilet. I'm not a great peer when squatting over a full toilet - my quads get tired. You never have to clean the seat, and you can just relax and let it go.

The only problem I have found is that the sqatter permits/promotes a small amount of splash on the lower legs. It's sort of like when you run the faucet over the wrong side of the spoon, and it all bounces all over the place? Yes - but it's pee, and it's on your work clothes...

I asked a friend about this, and she suggested that maybe we should turn around and pee the other direction? I'll get back to this point.

Well today, while spending a few hours on the ponder pot, I pondered about putting something that would guard your legs from getting the splash, and I realized that I invented the toilet! I thought - well, if we were just a bit farther off the ground, then the splash wouldn't bother us, and maybe there could be a guard, and in my head, I literally built a toilet. (Remember when I invented the library?)

Well, getting back to the reverse direction toilet sitting...I was on the bus going home tonight (I couldn't stomach standing on the MRT), and I saw a commercial about how it's colorectal cancer awareness month. There was a commercial for free screening - all it takes is a dip! I SWEAR that on this ad there was a picture of a person sitting on the toilet BACKWARDS (from how I/we do it)!!! I just went to the website, but I can't find that picture anywhere, and now I'm wondering if people just go to the bathroom backwards (from what I know...) in Asia? in Singapore? What is going on here? This is shaking my reality!!

Non-Borscht Purple Soup

I have been loving soups lately.

Nevermind that I don't have a microwave at work, so I either stick my soup in the dishwasher after it has finished its cycle (when it's still hot), or I take it up to Christian's office and put it in his microwave on the 31st floor.

Soup is just good, and it doesn't have bad-for-you-foods in it at all.

I did a recipe search on Epicurious for the most popular vegetarian soups. I got this sweet potato curry soup. So, Matt and I went to the store last night, and we bought all of the ingredients. The sweet potatoes looked icky and small, and then I saw in the front of the store that they had TONS of Japanese sweet potatoes. They looked pretty similar to the ones I usually buy, but they were a bit darker (and purplish). I was sure that when they were peeled that they would be orange.

I made the veggie broth first. All was going well. Then I went to peel and cut the potatoes, and they were TOTALLY purple. I put them into the greenish vegetable broth, and it turned a gross shade of purply brown. The soup turned out okay (not the best thing I've made), but it's purple.

My first thought was - who eats purple soup? My second thought was - Jews and Russians! Borscht is purple, and I love borscht, but I think because my expectations were that the soup would be orange, I am a bit thrown off. Please enjoy the photo of the purple soup and the kitty in a bag.

Pictures from the Dive trip to Perhentian

This includes getting on the boat on the jetty, the place we stayed, our funny rides where we were required to wear life jackets, three pictures of pictures we took for the competition, and funny sodas. The goldfish is the winning photo. The eel is hilarious, and the one that looks like it's from a Dr. Seuss book is the bumphead parrotfish (but it's not a great picture - it's just so cool).

Perhentian Island

We just got back from a super weekend on Perhentian Island, which is an island off the north east coast of the Malaysian peninsula (west Malaysia). Here's a crappy map, but you can see how far it is!

Basically, getting there SUCKED. It took 16 hours - and we left at 9pm on Thursday, so we didn't get there until about 1pm on Friday. We had time for two dives during the day and then a night dive (my first). Saturday we squeezed in four dives and a beach party, and then today we spent basically the whole time coming back.

I will post pictures tomorrow (too tired and too late), but a few highlights...

Night dive wasn't at all as scary as I thought it would be (though I didn't let Matt let go of my hand for more than a minute). There was also a full moon, which helped.

I shat for the first time with no toilet paper (they don't use that stuff in much of Malaysia).

The BEST part was on our third dive on Saturday - we saw a school of about 15 bumphead parrot fish. They were unbelievably huge and gorgeous, and we swam with them for quite a bit. They were about 1 meter hight and 1.5 meters long. It was unbelievable to be with such a huge animal in the water.

There was a photo contest on our trip - they give us each a camera for three dives, and then we submit three photos each, and we all voted and the judges used the votes to help them decide who won. Matt and I won second prize - which was a Olympus 8500 camera with underwater settings, plus an underwater casing and a 1gb memory card. We also won one underwater photography specialty course (we will pay for the other and both do it).

We did get some great photos underwater - if we get copies of them, I will post them.

Happy to be back with the kitty (and home).

Racial Harmony?

One update from the last posting - there were two more cockroaches last night. These she found IN our apartment, and she put them on their backs and watched them struggle from a very close distance. I think she might not be that nice (at least to bugs).

So you hear all the time that Singapore is the place of racial harmony. Everyone gets along great, and race doesn't matter. You hear it so much that you might even be inclined to believe it! Schools are mostly mixed, public housing (remember like 85% of Singaporeans live in public housing) has quotas that have to be filled, so you DO see people mixing.

In my first job here there were a couple of Chinese who spoke Mandarin among themselves, and I thought they were doing it to be rude. We had a SMALL office where four people sat, and they weren't so nice to be anyways, so I chalked it up to them just being mean people. (I even asked them to please speak English when we're all in the office).

In my new job there are a few girls who only speak Mandarin among themselves. I also found this a bit rude, and I felt left out when I was around them.

Then I realized that it's what people do in Singapore - they speak Mandarin. Something like 80% of the population is Chinese, and it doesn't seem to bother them that 20% isn't. I asked my friend who grew up in Singapore what it was like, and she said when she went to top schools (English schools), everyone spoke English, but she too felt left out and couldn't understand people when she went to junior college (11th and 12th grades) and university. She's fricken Singaporean! Can you imagine growing up in a country that is YOURS and people speak a different language, and culture is really in a different language, and then they're all telling you that it's all amazing and harmonious? That would piss me off.

Today I went to buy 11 newspapers. First I asked for ten (I forgot that I wanted 11), and the guy got ten newspapers. Then I said, "actually I need eleven. Sorry." He didn't understand at all. I counted "nine...ten...eleven." Nope. I took one extra and he put it back. I finally had to stop someone to ask them how to say eleven newspapers. (They said it for me).

Yesterday I tried to buy a hot drink (air conditioning chills me to the bones) before my Spanish class. The guy there also didn't understand a word I said, and I had to ask another patron.

I'm not at all saying that everyone should speak English all around the world and that there is something wrong with them for not understanding me. Not at all. I'm saying that if THEY'RE saying that this is an English speaking country and all of the races get along perfectly...I disagree. They might get along fine, but it's a Chinese culture.

Happy Easter!

Hunter

Well, Matt picked out the name Hunter for our cat.

He picked it the most lame way. When my friend Deeksha sent me a link to the SPCA website where she saw a cat that looked like Splinter (the long lost cat that we think got killed), Matt and I scrolled through all of the super cute cats together, and there was one that looked a lot like our current kitty. Her/his name was Hunter. Matt decided that our kitty's name should be Hunter. I clearly disagreed.

Until last night.

I got home after a fun night of dinner and talking with a few new friends, and I was proofreading another friend's paper. Just chilling on the couch (Matt is in Vietnam). Well...in walks present number 1. Little miss kitty brought in a cockroach - put it right next to me and started batting it around, and when it walked too far away, she either hit it back or picked it up in her mouth to bring it back. I got a shoe, picked her up and crunched the thing into pieces. I asked her very nicely not to do that again.

Unfortunately she must be a Chinese speaking cat, because ten minutes later in she walked with present number 2. This one got away quickly and ran under our tv stand. She went around to the back of the unit and waited for the cockroach to appear, which it did, and she promptly picked it up in her mouth and brought it to me and started batting it, etc. I was totally grossed out, but I killed this one also.

I hate killing cockroaches because they crunch.
When you pick it up in a tissue, you can actually feel the body. I used paper towel, and that barely helped!
White stuff comes out.

The kicker (ha!) was that I was just on the floor playing with the kitty (possibly named Hunter at this point), and I saw a cockroach leg or antenna or something. GRODY McGRODERSON!!!

X Physique (X Mistake?)

Goodness gracious. This morning/afternoon/all day Matt and I joined our friend, Martin (from the biking trip in Thailand, remember?) and his friend Philip for this crazy race called X Physique. (The picture is of my team mates. Matt is standing really tall to get to the same level as the other two. They're TALL!). The other picture is how red I am - and I don't think it's sun burn. I think it's from activity, and it's not going away!

I called to ask about it - the website has NO information - and they said it's like the Amazing Race, but in Singapore. That sounded awesome to us. We love that show. I told them I'm not in tip top shape, and I certainly haven't trained. They said no problem.

We started at 7:30 in the morning at the east end of the MRT line. Basically they give you a map with a red star, and you have to get to the red star. We had a book of maps in Singapore (street directory), so we could look up the streets on the clue, find the map and then find ourselves and figure out how to get there.

The first step - no problem. We ran a few kilometers, ended up at the beach. We got there quickly, got in kayaks and were off. These kayaks had no rudder. We (I was with Philip) ended up zig zagging through the entire course - wasting about four times the amount of energy necessary, and we were paddling hard. It was a LONG kayak run for no training at all. We got to go around these little "houses" that were floating out there. It seemed like some were places people lived and others were army posts, since that water is the border with Malaysia (the north side of Singapore). Anyways - my arms were shot after that, and I'm sure tomorrow they will be even worse.

Then we got a clue to go to some industrial area, and we actually ran along a SUPER DIRTY beach. Two things went through our heads - first that we didn't even know that Singapore had areas that were that dirty, and second that the missing man (Mas Salamat) definitely could be hiding in the woods (we had previously thought there was no way since Singapore is so small). Anyways, we hopped over fences, walked on non-paths, found a pet farm and some fish farms and ended up at this weird area that had paths and nothing else. We had to run to different points for no good reason (one twisted ankle and big tumble...), then we had to run out exactly the way we came, which always feels a little useless.

The next part was the worst, I believe. We started off running - meanwhile we had already run 4.5 miles...and it ended up that we were going really far. We ran by thousands of apartments, an IKEA, schools, nothingness, and much more. We finally arrived at our destination (our ninth mile), and Matt's knee was super hurting him, and I didn't think I could run anymore. I have never run this much in my life. Even walking became hard. But we were only halfway done. We ended up at Bedok Reservoir (where we did that zip line course, remember?), and we did one ropes challenge, and then we walked another two miles to end up at a school where we did a very small rapelling challenge (?).

Matt and I were feeling pretty guilty at this point, because Martin and Philip are in excellent shape, and they were excited to run the whole thing. Meanwhile, Matt and I are dying. We decided that we would cheat a little bit - Matt and I took at taxi to the next spot, and they ran. It's definitely not allowed, but it was either that or we quit, which would have meant that they couldn't continue. Also - there was a huge downpour at this point, but our shoes were already soaked from the kayaking...

Next - we got to the Tampines mountain biking park, and we biked for a few kilometers in the mud (rain, right?). This was my favorite part, but even this was so hard since we were beat already. At the end of that trail we were told we would stay on our bikes until the almost end of the race. This pleased us all immensely. We basically biked to a place, biked back to another place, dropped off the bikes and ran 1 kilo (at the most) back to the start. In total, thanks to Google's pedometer tool (or it might not be theirs, but I still give them credit), I found out that we completed 20 miles. That is a LOT for people like us who just aren't in tip top shape, and the truth is that if we had known how much it is, we never would have done it.

We finally got home, warmed up last night's leftovers and ate lunch at 4:00 pm (breakfast at 6:30 and going 20 miles...we were SO HUNGRY!), and now we're just hoping the phone doesn't ring so we have to stand up. Ouch!

In other exciting news, I gave a d'var torah at services on Friday night. I'm not good at public speaking, so that was exciting for me. Exciting in a challenging way.

We got in some good Settlers on Friday night with some Jews after dinner - it was fun.

Last night we ended up going to see No Country for Old Men. That was stressful.

Other than today, it was a super nice and relaxing weekend.

I think we'll look back on today and think it was cool that we did it, but right now we're just trying to move!!

Overheard on the MRT

"Could you PLEASE cover your mouth when you cough?"

"It's a public place."

"Exactly! You're sharing your germs with everyone. Please cover your mouth!"

"You have no right to tell me what to do."

"It's just common sense - it's rude to cough without covering your mouth."

"Don't tell me what to do."

"Ugh" Then she opens her newspaper very wide so it is in the face of the cougher.

This was on the MRT on the way to work - between two grown women. I was definitely on the side of the criticizer. Come on! People cough all the time on the train, and it's FILLED with people, and it grosses me out.

In other news - it is NOT the rainy season, and it has rained pretty much straight all week. Very wet.

Kitty has learned to jump from our bed out the window (but it's FAR to the ground!). We're nervous she's going to try to jump down and hurt herself. How many broken legs does she want!?

She just ate a bug.

Remember?

Remember when I blogged about life in Singapore?
Well...now it's just about life with Kitty McSchmitterson.

This weekend was pretty exciting. Saturday we got our air conditioning fixed (sort of). We also went to the market, ate some fish balls, and we took the kitty to the vet. As mentioned above, she got the okay to go outside, so when Matt and I went to dinner with friends on Saturday night, we left her outside where she used to hang out before she started living with us.

We had an excellent dinner and drinks (our favorite Indian place, obviously), and when we came back, the Scmitty was nowhere to be found. I looked for literally two hours, and all of the other cats came running and gathered at our balcony (literally, at least six), but no kitty. I was really upset. I was sad because I was worried for her, but I also realized that I loved her too much, and I lost the battle. Remember when I didn't giver her a name, because I didn't want to become attached. Oops.

Well, I didn't sleep much at all, and at six something I got up to go look for her again. I found her, but she was totally unresponsive (usually she runs up to me when she sees me), and she wouldn't even look at me. I picked her up, and she meowed like a nutty elephant. I was worried. I brought her home, and she hid behind the door in the bathroom for hours. She didn't eat or drink, and all she did was sleep or sit and be miserable. She didn't even want to be pet. I think that the vaccination made her sick, and she had a little kitty flu, but I was super worried. As an update, she has played about four times since yesterday morning (usually she gets in at least 25 per day), so it's better than none, but she's not exactly in tip top shape. Right now she is sleeping on a blanket on a shelf in a closet - wedged in between the blanket and the shelf. Actually, I'll include a picture. It's funny.

Matt and I took a scuba underwater photography class in a pool on Sunday. It was definitely not my favorite thing I have done since I moved to Singapore. Then I got to study a little Gemara. I like that.

An update on the lentil stew - I tried again tonight, and I succeeded, but the water didn't evaporate enough, so I took out the potato chunks (and some of the carrot chunks) and immersion blendered the rest, and it's a great soup.

I still won't try the apple cake again, though.

Essau was better at Lentil Stew...

Last night after work, I stopped at the grocery store to pick up some perishables to make a great lentil stew. It was Matt's idea (I'm sort of sick of coming up with ideas for dinner all the time), and I was totally game. I picked them up, took the bus home, and I started cooking.

I was sooooo hungry.

For the first time since my failed apple cakes (story to come...), I had to throw out the entire thing. I left the burner on too high, and it burned the bottom, making it all smell/taste like smoke. All of my groceries and wonderful vegetable cutting was for naught. Poo.

We had chocolate chip pancakes for dinner instead.

1) Yay!
2) Kitty
3) Apple Cake

1) I got a message this morning that Kirsten got engaged! Yippee for Kirsten!! I do recall having a conversation while we were in college that she preferred to have a macabre wedding where she would wear only black, and there would be tons of candles and cheese. I wonder if she will stick to this. I also wonder if I'll be able to go! I hate being so far away when such good things are happening at home!!

2) We took the kitty to the vet today for her two week check up after her abortive spayment. She is doing wonderfully. Her wound is nearly healed, her furry white pubes are well on their way to filling in the gap, and she is just normal. The vet said she was so nervous that she got sweaty paws. How cute is that? When Matt was holding her her paws left little wet marks on his t-shirt! She should hang out with Fidler...

We also got news that we can let her go outside and hang with her friends again. Thank goodness - I was dying with our non airconditioned and non-open windowed apartment (we also got our air conditioning fixed this morning...). We got home from the vet, opened the door and the windows, and she played inside for a really long time. Finally, she ventured outside, and when I left to go sit at the coffee shop for a while, she saw Matt and ran to him and has been sleeping either on me or on Matt since (it's been about 4.5 hours), even though she was literally climbing the walls to get out.

3) In graduate school I was really craving apple cake. I got invited to someone's house for shabbat dinner, so I made a apple cake. Unfortunately I forgot some ingredient (I can't remember which one), and it tasted REALLY hard and dry. It was okay if you had a mouthful of tea when you took the bite. This was Daniel and Ziva's.

The next week I was invited to Joey and Jessica's for Shabbat, and I was still craving apple cake (the first one didn't count), so I made it again. I had two packages of eggs in my refrigerator. One package was super old, and one was super new. I was too lazy to throw out the old ones, and I sort of forgot about them when I was making the cake. I used an old one, realized that it looked a bit weird, but figured it would be fine, and brought the cake over. When I got there I realized that the cake looked weird because I had used the old eggs, and we didn't eat it.

The NEXT week I hosted a dinner, and yet again, I tried the cake. Craving was still there. I made the cake, was super excited, tasted it, and I realized that I didn't put the sugar in. It was gross.

No more apple cake attempts for me.

Walking Stupidly

Singaporeans are the worst walkers. Whenever I'm trying to get somewhere there are always at least two strays per five meters. People sort of wander, stop, go to the left, go to the right...it drives me CRAZY! They're also really slow. In New York I used to walk to work everyday. I never even thought about getting where I wanted to go. People stay on the correct sides of the sidewalk, and they walk STRAIGHT and at a regular pace. Here it's a struggle everyday.

I have pondered and pondered, and I had NO idea where it came from. I still don't really know, but I have found one thing that definitely doesn't help. When you're going into or out of the MRT (our subway), you have to go through booths, like in DC, NYC or anywhere else. In New York, you go in through the turnstiles and you go out to the side or maybe through some turnstiles, but specific ones. Here, you go in and out through turnstiles. Let's say there are 15 turnstiles in the station...there will be three going out, then two going in, then four going out, etc. So people are walking all over the place, cutting each other off, making right hand turns from the left lane.

Which came first? The bad walking or the mixed up turnstiles? I have no idea, but I can tell you that it does not help organize people on the way to work.

In other news, the kitty is doing amazingly. She is still at home, which we feel bad about, but she is nearly ready to go out into the world (with her new scar). Hopefully the other cats will see that she is tough and not beat her up, as they used to.

Some notable notes:
She has been playing with gravity - for example, picking up my keys (from the table) in her mouth (while standing on the table) and then dropping them on the floor. Or...standing on the table, picking up a pen with her paw (she is super talented) and pushing it onto the floor.

She has friends in the neighborhood...a lady stopped by to see if we knew where "Snowball" is. She said that the girls who are friends with her are very upset, and they all thought that she got captured. I let her know that she would be able to come out to play with her friends in few days. We are worried, though, that someone will take her (like we did, I guess...). Matt did get her microchipped.

She has amazing soccer moves. Both legs - moving forward, towards the goal, maneuvering around her defenders (chairs, toys, people, lamps). It's amazing.

She likes to sleep on us still. She slept on my legs for 5 hours last night, and then when I moved, she moved so that she was laying over another part of my body. Pretty sweet. Hard to not love that.

The Man Hunt

So this guy was in prison. He went to the bathroom, apparently while waiting for a visit from his family, and he escapes.

Details:
He's the head of Jemaah Islamiya in Singapore
Singapore has some of the best security for their prisons in the world
Singapore is a self contained, SMALL island

WHY THE HELL DID THIS GUY GET AWAY, AND WHY THE HELL CAN'T THEY FIND HIM!?

I just don't understand.
Why did they let such a bad dude go to the bathroom by himself in a place where you can apparently escape?
This country is all looking for him. There are posters everywhere. There were at least 10 pages today in the newspaper devoted to the man hunt, AND, yesterday, all people in Singapore got a text to their hand phone with a picture of him! He's on all of the buses, restaurant windows...everywhere.

So my first day in Singapore I ran into our friend Christian. I'm telling you, this country is really small. There's just no excuse that they haven't found him yet.