Saturday, August 29, 2009

Dena and Juan's Wedding and More

After meeting two wonderful people, separately, for breakfast (Yaffa and Becca), the real wedding celebrations began. I went with Dena to get her hair done and then we got to relax in her beautiful suite at the Har Tzion hotel in Jerusalem. I had never heard of the hotel before, but it is absolutely gorgeous. Dena got her make-up done, and we helped her figure out getting her dress on, and all of the sudden, she was a bride. It was amazing to watch the transformation of her clothing, but since I saw her in the morning, she looked different than normal. I think her body already knew she was a bride.

The wedding itself was soooo beautiful - on a lot of levels. First of all it was in an amazing gardeny area that overlooks the old city. Second of all Juan and Dena both looked unbelievable and so happy, and also the emotions that were flying around this place - after YEARS of this nutty conversion disaster and just so many people that love them. It was just beautiful.

A highlight for me was when Eli and I got caught in the yichud room. I had been asked to bring up the ketuba and the broken glass and whatever else after the chuppah. It seemed like everyone was saying mazal tov to them, so it seemed like Eli and I had a few minutes. Their yichud room was also their room was also where we were putting all the stuff. We thought we had enough time to pee. Both of us. Well, I peed with no problem. But as soon as Eli went in there and closed the door, in marched the video guy, the photographer, the hotel people and JUAN AND DENA!!! They were like, "what are you DOING here?" It was totally awkward!

Post - wedding, I went to Tel Aviv to spend the day with Hagit. We walked all around the city and had an amazing time. I miss her and Ofir so much, and I hadn't seen her since I left New York. Ofir was in miluim so I didn't get to see him, which was very sad.

Shabbat in Jerusalem was an interesting experience for me. I wasn't sure what type of reaction I would have. I was scared I would want it back in my life more than it is now, and who knows, I could really just want to move back to Jerusalem. This was not the case. I really enjoyed shul and the shabbat atmosphere in Jerusalem in general, but I did not feel that I want to "be like this" again. The singing at shira chadasha did overwhelm me, but more than that was just the feeling that I hadn't felt since I was in Israel and 17 where I just realize that everyone around me is Jewish, and that alone was cool enough. I did, however, forget a bit how to daven. I didn't actually FORGET, but I don't have the entire service memorized anymore, which is very weird to me.

Eli and I walked to the tayelet and had a nice sit overlooking the old city before she flew back to NYC.

Motzei shabbat Becca, Anna and I went to see the new outdoor mall in Jerusalem - it's between the downtown area and the old city area, and it was actually, surprisingly nice! We also checked out the new midrachov on Yaffo. Apparently it will all be pedestrian and light rail only in a few years. it does look really different.

Then I went to Juan and Dena's sheva brachot, which was on a beautiful porch with wonderful people.

I have loved being in a city that is so filled with history, neat buildings, and a lot of emotion. I think that that is totally the opposite of Singapore, and I appreciated them here. The character of the place really stuck out to me - coming from Singapore.

One more "totally Israel" story - then I'm off to return back to Singapore.

Friday morning I took a taxi to the bus station, and the taxi driver asked if he could pick up his daughter and drive her to school, with me in the car, with the meter on. I said yes. Weird. Then we got into a big discussion about how the "Arabs own the world." He also said they're all violent, and other bad things. I was saying, "well I'm not sure it's EVERYONE," and "the Arabs in the Palestinian territories have a pretty rough life..." and what not, and it got pretty heated. We were going back and forth, and then I got to the station, I paid, and he said "yom tov! Shabbat Shalom! Bye." and that was it.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Israel!!

This will be short, because I'm so exhausted, and I have to wake up soon, but I must write for three minutes about being in Israel.

I arrived (via Dubai and Istanbul) on Tuesday - for Dena and Juan's wedding, which takes place on Thursday. After 21 hours and three flights, and honestly very easy traveling, I arrived. I haven't been here in two and a half years, which is actually quite long for me to not be in Israel.

A few interesting moments -

I took a sherut (like a van that follows the bus route and charges about the same but gets you there a bit faster) from B'nei Brak area from my cousins to Jerusalem - the MOST religious areas. It was all men in the car, and I wanted to pass up my money to pay, but they wouldn't take money from me. It's not modest to take something from a woman. Obviously. So the guy put my change down on his sefer (his religious book he was studying), and I picked it up. It was weird.

Today Dena's good friends and family got to spend the day at a spa in the Dead Sea - I literally think that all bad things that were on my body are gone. When I went in the sauna afterwards to get off the extra gross skin, there was nothing left! I feel pure. I hope Dena does too.

Tonight Eli and I went with Dena to the kotel. We took a taxi, and there was a ton of traffic approaching the old city. We couldn't enter in the taxi, because there was a chefetz chashud - a "suspicious object" somewhere in the old city. Though, we wanted to tell the guards, "we have a bride, and she needs to get through!" Luckily the chefetz chashud can only harm cars, and people were allowed to walk in just fine, so we just did that instead.

Being in Israel reminds me of lots of funny and bizarre experiences I had when I lived here. I remember thinking that living in Israel was really exotic and really feeling like I had lived abroad. While it is certainly not America, and people speak less English than I remember (though my Hebrew is surprisingly good), the culture is so much closer to what I grew up with, and the traditions and people are all familiar - and Singapore/Asia just feels so totally different.

I'm going to bet that none of my thoughts are coherent in this posting, but rather than re-read it and fix that, I'm going to bed.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Videos from Diving

1 - school of bumpheads in Sipadan


2 - reef shark


3 - HUGE school of barracuda!


4 - stupid crab - take that coral off! would be so much easier!! (night dive)


5 - electric clam - it's actually lighting up!


6 - Jack fish!!! And there was a giant travelli (sp?) in the middle, but it's not in this video


8 - Turtle

Sipadan/Kapalai/Pulau Weh

Diving at Sipadan was a life highlight. We descended on our first dive (at 6am!) in a huge school of jack fish. There was a giant school of bumphead parrot fish (my favorites!), we saw black tip and white tip reef sharks and turtles all over the place. About 10 minutes in we saw an unbelievable tornado of barracuda. My mask kept leaking, because I kept smiling. It was literally unbelievable. Sipadan had tons of big stuff, while the other places in the area had all small stuff - and I love the big stuff.

We had four dives by 12:30 - with a minor run-in with the coral. I think our boat driver had never been to Sipadan, since he didn't seem to know his way, and now the coral scabs on my ankle are living to tell the stories. We pulled the boat over coral for about a half hour...not normal. Anyways - it was unbelievable.

All nights at Kapalai, our DM, whom we think had the hots for Tenley, took us out at night - totally not part of his job - to see the mandarin fish and also to watch him feed an eel. We saw two little tiny cuttlefish mating. The night dives were particularly cool.

After three and a half days of diving in that area (and a tough Hildebrandt ping-pong tournament - whoever had the good paddle and good side won), we hopped back on the boat and went back to the Tawau airport to fly back to KL and say bye to Tenley.
Link
After another shady hotel by the KL airport (still haven't found one we would stay in again), we flew to Medan, where we were "cleaned" upon entering. I'm sure that got rid of all "swine flu" (see photo). We had a surprisingly good nasi goreng lunch and then had a wonderfully Indonesian experience. When entering the Medan airport/gate area, the security guy got especially excited to see American passports. "My brother lives in New York!" he says to Matt in bahasa. "Maybe it's New Jersey?" He goes on for a few minutes, and while he's talking, about ten people enter the gate area with no security at all. Hmmm.

Our flight from Medan was a local, Indonesian airlines (see photo). We weren't sure we would survive. Actually, the plane was so old, we felt like we were on an American airline, but it made it. Flying over Banda Aceh was interesting. It was nearly completely devastated in the tsunami in December 2004, so saw a ton of new, colorful housing projects, and a LOT of construction. If you're interested to see what it looked like after the tsunami, do a google image search for "Banda Aceh tsunami" - truly unbelievable.

We had another wonderfully Indonesian experience in the Banda Aceh airport. I asked the policeman if there are legitimate/legal taxis, and he said, "None of the taxis are legal, so you can take any of them."

We took a "fast ferry" over to Pulau Weh - just north of Banda Aceh, on the tip of Sumatra. The island has very little going on - a few villages, a small city, and a lot of trees, mountains, and it seemed like a lot of monkeys.

We stayed on a beach about 45 minutes from the ferry, and all there was was a few "cafes," a few dive shops, and a beach - oh and our "hotel."

We had an extremely relaxing four days there - though I was stuffy for most of it, so I only made it down for two dives. Matt was mildly underwhelmed by the diving, but I think that was just because we had come from such amazing places. We made friends with a few dogs, a goat or two and some people. We didn't love the feel of the place - seemed like there was a bit of politics or something going on among the dive masters. Not such a welcoming feeling, but overall, it was fine, and it was BEAUTIFUL.

Finally - after two amazing weeks, we got back to Singapore last night, to our totally empty apartment. We have a chair, a bed, and a book shelf, and our poor Kitty was here for two weeks without us. She seems to be fine, though, and she was very happy to sleep in our legs last night.

Here are the 500 photos we took cut down to something like 80 or maybe a bit more :)
Land stuff, Manado Diving, Rest of the Diving.

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Manado

So, I never figured out how to blog from the ipod, but right now I have a few minutes of access to a real computer. What a luxury.

The reason I have been so blog-absent in the past week (plus...) is that we have been in the middle of nowhere - diving. It has been one of the best weeks of my life (so far).

After the craziness of our last week in Singapore, including packing up our entire apartment and leaving for the airport at 7am last Saturday, Matt and I flew to meet a group of divers in Manado. We originally went because our friends Andy and Karla were going, but because of a motorcycle accident (they're okay), they didn't go, but we still went with their friends. Now they're our friends too.

Manado is known as one of the best places for "macro diving" in the world. This is diving where you look for tiny stuff - lots of newty branches, little shrimp and crabs, and god knows what else you can find in the sand. Most of it is what they call "muck diving" where you dive in a mostly sand bottom - no huge amounts of fish and not lots of coral. We were with a mostly-very-experienced group of people, and we had a few great dive masters, so we saw a LOT of amazing stuff.

I got introduced to my first blue-ring octopus, frog fish, rhinopias, mantis shrimp, electric clam, pegasus sea moth, crocodile fish, porcupine fish...and much much more. I also saw the biggest turtle I have ever seen. When I have more time on the internet I will 1) upload our pictures and 2) link to some pictures of these. I'm sure they're all in wikipedia if you're interested.

We got to dive for two days at Manado, one day of diving in Lembeh, and one day of diving in Bunaken.

We stayed at this "five star resort" - in quotes because it's Indonesia, and really, is anything five star in Indonesia? But it was great. The whole trip was unbelievable.

After Manado, Matt and I flew to KL and we met up with Tenley at 1am in a bizarre KL airport hotel. This was after a drive at 130 km/hr, where I was sure either our driver was pissed or suicidal. Don't tell my mother. (just kidding, mom)

We all got on a plane the next morning for Tawau - in Borneo - the south easternist place in Malaysian Borneo, next to Kalimantan (which is my favorite name for a province, and I want to name our first kid Kalimantan). After an hour drive, and an hour boat ride, we ended up at one of the most beautiful resorts/places I have ever seen. It's the Sipidan-Kapalai Dive Resort (can google). It's kind of on an island - Kapalai - but there actually is no island - it's all buildings on stilts on a sand bar. Our room is unbelievably amazing. The whole place is wooden, with open windows, balcony, amazing bathroom...and off our balcony we have already seen three lion fish, at least five rays, a turtle and tons of other fish.

At this resort, they take us for three dives per day and then we can do unlimited diving off the reef in the back. We have done six dives so far, and they have been amazing. Today we dived at a couple of nearby islands. Our dive master is superb. Tonight he took us to see mandarin fish at sunset. We have seen leaf fish, a bunch of cuttlefish (including BABY ones), a whole bunch of giant moray eels, and so so much more.

Tomorrow...SIPADAN...which is why we're here.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Thursday, August 6, 2009

My Favorite Singaporean Dish

I definitely have a favorite dish. Fishball noodles is what I like when I need quick and reliable. Chicken rice is great when you feel like eating lots of fat (and yum). Prawn mee is also quite a treat - at least the one by our house. But, I have a REAL favorite dish. The only problem is, I have no idea what it's called, and I barely know what's in it.

My friend, Rachel introduced me to it. They make it in one stall in the hawker center by our house, and the stall's name is something like Chee Mee Cooked Food. Not helpful. All the signs are only in Chinese. When I asked Rachel what it is, she only told me a whole bunch of Chinese words that I can't pronounce or remember.

It is sort of similar to rojak - in that it's a bunch of stuff with peanut and chilli sauce. The stuff, however, is not the same as rojak. One thing is the same - some sort of fried tofu. The rest, however, is totally different. There seems to sometimes be bee hoon (noodles) at the bottom. I think there is squid (raw?), some green beans, green leafed veggie, sprouts, maybe some pineapple?, and I honestly don't know what else. You sprinkle the nuts on top and then you put this spicy red chilli sauce over it. It's amazing. Too bad when we move I won't be able to get it anywhere else, because I have no idea what the hell it is, and I can't even describe it.

Speaking of moving...we found a new apartment downtown. We are moving at the end of this month, however this week has been a crazy mess. Our landlord, Mr. Tan, sold our apartment. It changes hands on the 10th. The new guy said that we can stay until the end of the month. He said that Mr. Tan's furniture (that we use) can also stay. Then Mr. Tan got very paranoid and he decided he wanted to move it all out on Saturday (the day we're leaving for a two week trip), including the bed, the refrigerator, and everything else. So, it's happening. We are staying. We are keeping our tiny guest bed, and a chair, and all the rest of it is going. I'm only sad that some of our refrigeratables might go bad - so I'm trying to find a home for them for a few weeks.

In other news, we dropped off our "guest cats" tonight. Bye Cyrus and Seiku. They are going back to the UK while we're on our trip, and no one could care for them - since they need care twice a day. I can't believe they were here for five months.

Saturday, August 1, 2009

More Kitty Stories

This morning Kitty wouldn't stop meowing. She loves to wake us up in the morning, though we're not really sure why. She doesn't usually eat right away when we feed her, and we leave the door to our room cracked, so she can leave before we get up. She likes to play and everything, but a year and a half should teach her that the first thing Matt and I do in the morning almost NEVER includes fun play with the cat.

This morning she was especially excited to wake up, and I noted that it was at exactly 5:45, which is exactly the hour that Matt (therefore I do to...) wakes up every week day. She's so smart!!! She thought Matt's alarm didn't go off, and she didn't want him to be late for work. I'm telling you, she might actually be this sophisticated.

In other Kitty news, last night we heard a loud hiss, and we saw Cyrus run off, with something in his mouth, and Seiku wasn't far behind. They ran out of the kitchen and into their room. Matt found what they had - it was a grilled chicken wing. Kitty must have gone to get it from the BBQ pits (as IF we don't feed her enough!), and she somehow snuck it into our house, into the back of the kitchen. Then S and C must have seen her do that, and they stole it from her.

When S and C moved in (Thursday is their last day at Chateau Hildebrandt), Matt put up something like chicken wire on all windows and the sliding door and main gate. Now the cats can't get out, but somehow (she's brilliant, I swear), our Kitty found a way to push a piece aside with her little paw, and she goes outside. If they C and S were thinking properly, they would have collaborated with her, asking her to go to the BBQ pits and bringing back spoils for everyone. Now, everyone loses.