Carlebach in Singapore?

So, just in case you thought I was TOTALLY not Jewish anymore (after my last posting...), I went to shul tonight. They have an Ashkenazi (E. European Jewish) service once a month, and this month they did a Carlebach service. There was LOTS of singing, and it was really really great. I loved it. Turns out there are some parts of Judaism that make me happy - I'm sure this surprises you if you know me. :)

It might also surprise you (if you know Matt) that he didn't go. Rather, he went to the costume shop and rented a costume. What is it? You'll have to wait to see pictures after the Halloween party tomorrow night.

Matt's growing even more attached to the little kitten (who weights 1.1 kg, btw). She is REALLY cute, but she's so scared of the world, it's hard to be friends with her. I generally am attracted to confident people - those like Splinter who just walk up to people and push their head against your ankle. This little kitty (which has continued to remain nameless) runs the other way when the leaves blow two centimeters.

Yesterday the MRT was closed for an hour. They had announcements in four languages, they fixed it quickly, you could UNDERSTAND the announcement (unlike NYC...). I couldn't believe it closed, and I couldn't believe how efficiently it closed and opened.

Crabby

I'm crabby.

I don't mean whiney (though I have been that a lot lately...).

I don't mean Krabi - like the place that me, Matt, Jer and Josh are going in December (in Thailand).

I mean I ate so much crab tonight, and it got all over my body. The crab's body was literally bigger than my entire hand (including fingers). We went out with two of Matt's friends from grad school to a place in Geylang, where all of the legal prostitutes are. Unfortunately I didn't get to see the prostitutes, since we finished dinner too late, but the area looked really cool.

We had a whole family of prawn - three each - and they were so fricken good. This was one of the first times in my life that I pulled apart an animal and ate it. I even touched the crab's eyeball (but I didn't touch the prawn's eyeballs - they were grosser). It actually tasted really good. The last time we went for crab I felt like it was a lot of work with very little reward, but this was just really tasty. Selina (one of the friends) said that they're Sri Lankan crabs. Maybe they make them tasty down there (over there?).

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. :(