page3

Yes, we missed a whole day! Partly because we were on the plane, and partly because of the 14 hour time difference!
Our flight was very long. The comfort of Business Class did help a little, but it's still an exhausting trip no matter how you look at it. Our seats were split across the aisle, with two seats next to the windows on one side, and two on the other. Rory sat with Sydney and I with Maxine. The seats are able to slide right down into a bed-like configuration so most people are able to actually get some sleep on thte plane. I emphasize MOST people! The connection in Japan was a drag - by this time we just wanted to get to the hotel, but we still had another 7 hours!
The seats on Japan Airlines were not as comfortable but actually more spacious. This time Rory sat next to me and the kids sat together a few rows ahead of us. The flight attendants took great care of them, giving them plenty of treats! I watched a couple of movies and played Tetris, a lot!
We arrived in Singapore at midnight. After clearing customs we had to wait in line for a taxi to take us to the hotel. Initially we thought that if DFW was anything to go buy, considering the length of the queue we could be there till daybreak! But, there was a never-ending supply of taxis - they just kept on coming! We checked into to hotel a little after 1am, and flopped into bed exhausted.

Although we were exhausted, yesterday we woke up at 3am, after only a few hours sleep. The buffet breakfast downstairs in the hotel was interesting! In addition to the traditional "continental breakfast" there were many Asian dishes that consisted of a lot of fish and dumplings. We decided to stick to the dishes we recognized!
Around 9am we met with Lisa Jones, our relocation person. She's an Aussie expat, with two kids the same age as Max & Syd which made me feel a more at ease with the way she would handle things.
We started out the morning visiting the Canadian International School of Singapore. I have to say I was quite taken aback by the age of the campus initially. One of the staff members, a Canadian expat, gave us a thorough tour of the campus and although it is old, I felt a whole lot better after seeing the classrooms and how they function. Next year they will be opening a new start-of-the-art campus. The girls were very pleased to hear that school starts at 8:40am and finishes up at 3:00pm, with a recess and another lunch break! That kind of made up for the fact that they have to wear uniforms! The campus is made up of a few a 3-storey buildings, with covered breezeways. The cafeteria is on the top floor of one block, which is open on one side. I liked that they actually get to see outdoors and get some fresh air during the day! Maxine's favorite thing was the climbing wall. Sydney's was that she could take archery as an extra-mural!
There are numerous bussing options for students. Either both there-and-back, there only, or back only. Most people do there only since kids usually have some sort of after-school activity and you end up having to get them later anyway. The busses are what we would consider "traveling" busses, not our "school-type" busses. The service is also door-to-door!

After a sandwich lunch we headed off to see some houses. There were 5 on our list, but one had already gone by the time we started, so we were down to four. The first one was a 3-storey house being renovated. It was near the school, nearby grocery stores, and less than 5 minutes from the Botanical Gardens! It had 5 bedrooms, with big, bright rooms, marble floors on the ground floors and wood upstairs. Each bedroom had it's own bathroom. A necessity we've come to realize, with having two girls! After looking at the house, we loved it and after discussing our options with Lisa it seemed that this one would go very quickly. If we were interested we would have to move fast. So, onto the next house. Not so great house. Very nice back yard, if you could avoid being hit on the head with falling coconuts - seriously! It made the list, but a distant second. The third didn't even come into play, although it had a wonderful pool area. The fourth one was a 4-storey with no yard, so that didn't work for us either. So we went ahead with the first house we saw! After negotiating the lease terms, the landlord agreed to put in a pool for us, and include the a/c and yard maintenance in the lease. Since the bathrooms were all newly renovated, it was painted throughout, and the kitchen had brand new appliances it was like we would be moving into a brand new house!
By this time we were exhausted! Back to the hotel for a swim and some supper.

This jeg-lag is a killer! We're waking up at 3am and then we're exhausted by lunchtime, but have to keep ourselves awake as late as possible so we can try to sleep through the night. Add to that that fact that your body still thinks breakfast is at suppertime and you tend to feel pretty grotty most of the day!

Since our hotel is linked to Raffles Shopping Center, we went there to find something for supper last night. We ate at Aerin's, an open-air restaurant, with a beautiful fountain adjacent to the seating area, and sunshine peeking in from the glass ceiling of the Raffles center above. It was a very pretty setting and the food was excellent and recognizable!

Since we had leased a house, we now needed some furniture. So, we went to visit a furniture leasing company. What a whipping! Nothing like furnishing your entire house in 2 hours, while functioning on a few hours sleep and starving hungry! For the most part I selected items off the showroom floor, which were actually very similar to what I was looking for anyway. After that we went back to the hotel and the kids had a swim before supper.
We ate at Out of the Pan, once again, in the Raffles Center. They specialize in crepes, both savory and sweet - quite delicious!!!

This morning we visited the International School of Singapore. I coudl tell, as soon as we walked in, that I didn't like the atmosphere. The person who met with us asked the girls to write an impromptu page-long letter telling her why they liked Singapore, and why they liked ISS and wanted to go to school there. All this after being in there for only one day, and not having seen the school yet. I thought it was very strange and annoying! I had pretty much made up my mind already but went along on the tour of the campus. It was an even older campus that the Canadian School. The facilities were not as good either. Maxine and Sydney didn't like it at all. Another decision made!

Today we rented a car. There's a lot more that goes into renting a car in Singapore than you would realize! Firstly, all vehicles, inlcuding motorcycles, in Sinapore are equipped with a "cash card reader" on their dashboard. You have to purchase a cash card at 7-eleven (yes, they have those there too) and load it up with dollars. This will function somewhat like an automatic toll-tag, for both roads and car-parks. You insert your card into the reader on your dash and when you exit a car-park the amount is automatically deducted from the card. Apparently the cards can also be used to buy groceries, so I suppose they're somewhat like a debit-card too. Anyway, we got ourselves a cash card. In case we were planning on parking on the street, we had to but a parking coupon booklet. Each time you park on the street, in certain locations, you have to tear of the "chads" indicating the date, and time you started parking. You purchase either one-hour or 30-minute cards. "Hanging Chads" are not allowed and you will receive a fine and probably have to go to court too.

Rory had purchased a mapbook yesterday and we'd planned a couple of places to visit over the next few days. We needed to get an idea of how much things cost, so we visited IKEA and a couple of other stores. Most things are a more expensive, not excessively though. We'll need to buy small appliances like clock radios, hairdriers, toaster.....

Driving in Singapore is....different. To start with you're on the opposite side of the car, on the opposite side of the road. They you have huge doub-decker busses that you have to give way to, whether you want to or not! Add to that the motorcycles that come our of nowhere and zap between the cars, and the 15,000 taxis in Singapore and you've got an area the size of a postage stamp in which to manouver your car! Yikes! It would be easier if the roads were long, wide, open roads, but no, they're very narrow, with lots of sharp turns, and intersections just about every 50 feet!One thing I do like is that the intersections are blocked out in yellow - theoretically, you're supposed to keep that area clear at all times. Speed doesn't seem to be a factor, it's more the changing of lanes - you tend to feel like you're in an ant farm!

We stopped in at Plaza Singapura, another 5-storey shopping center. This one has a good electrnics store, furniture store and bedding store. Once again, everything was a little more pricey, and the quality not as good as what we get at home. The kids wanted to watch a movie so we went to see Step up 2 the Streets. Sydney was very happy - she'd aged three years instantly. In the USA it's rated PG13 and in Singapore its not!!!! It was very funny for us to see how the asian population reacted to certain scenes in the movie. There's an asian character in the movie and obviously she has a pronounced asian accent for effect. Whenever she spoke the audience thought it was hysterically funny!

Another stop was Mustafa's in Little India. Oh Boy! At least 5 storeys crammed to the ceiling with any kind of dollar store junk you could imagine! There were a few floors that had some better items, but it was just too much to take in, and the heady smells of the curried food items, and insense was just too much. We bought a few souveniers and headed back to the hotel.
Another full day!

It's Good Friday and seeing that only 10% of the island is Christian, besides bank and businesses everything else was up and runnning. We planned a day full of touring the island.

We wanted to visit a few of the dog parks, Courts - a large electronics store, and try to find a beach!
We headed north up the Central Expressway to the Pasir Ris part of the island.The interesting and very frustrating thing about this part of the island is that every road is called Pasir Ris - they're just numbered -so you'll get Pasir Ris Road 1, Pasir Ris Road 2, and so on. But, as if that isn't bad enough, they add avenues and lanes too! Needless to say, we drove around in circles for a frustrating amount of time!
We stopped in at Pasir Ris Park, an AMAZING park, walking and bike tails, and an incredible playground with an enormous space-net the kids can climb on, zip-lines, cableways, and huge slides. It's on the water, but there's not much of a beach, besides, the kids were having way too much fun on the playgrounds to worry about that. We relaxed whie the kids worked off some energy. Then we moved on to Courts, which turned out to be next door to IKEA, except we hadn't seen it on our last trip. Courts is much like a Best Buy, with furniture, but functions like IKEA! We priced some small appliances and checked out the televisions. Everything seemed to be about 10-15 percent more expensive than in the USA.
We stopped in at the in-house cafe for some sandwiches before braving the roads again. We stopped in at a dog park, basically a fenced in area where dogs can run freely. Much to my surprise, everything was very clean and orderly. I had imagined dozens of dogs running loose, barking, snapping and pooping everywhere! I'll be a nervous wreck bringing our mutts here!
Within walking distance of our house is a small center with a salon, hawkers stalls, and a pub. It was time for lunch! It seemed to be a good hang-out for other ang moh's too! Must remember that! The pub was called Bar Bar Black Sheep, and in addition to fish and chips you could get burgers, and a selection of asian food. We all enjoyed some good fish and chips under the awning while the rain poured down.
We got hopelessly lost, well not really lost, just stuck in a loop, trying to make our way down to Rory's office building, via our house. We missed a turning a got stuck in a neighborhood, then coudn't get onto the road we needed to be on, then we got on a road we didn't want to be on, and ended up going through the main shopping district among throngs of busy shoppers darting in and out of traffic. A nightmare! Tempers were flaring, and I was exhausted from navigating a map all day and trying to find our where we were, finding alternate routes, etc. etc. so we headed "home" for a dip in the pool.

Rory went into the office today. He'd been really nervous and stressed out about it for months. The announced that the office was closing down and that he would be coming in for "head office" at 9am and he was there at 10am!!!! Nice going!!! It all seemed to go well though - I think everyone had either heard about it beforehand, or they were still in shock by the time Rory arrived! He met everyone in the office and got a cheat sheet of names with pictures so he can figure out who's who - not that easy! They seem to switch between using their given names and "western" names, and also switch around their first and last names which makes everything very confusing!!!
Max, Syd and I took a taxi to Chinatown for a wander around. That was a lot of fun! We all had lots of gifts to buy for friends so we really got to explore all the stalls. We had Satay for lunch at the hawkers stalls - about the only thing on the menu we recognized again! It was really good though - even the kids loved it.
After lunch we worked our way back to the taxi rank, and got back to the hotel with barely a breath to spare before the heavens opened up! We had some coffee at Starbucks and then met up with Rory at the pool after it was done raining. That evening we dined at the very nice Thai restaurant in the hotel.

Last night we skipped supper and hit the coffee and donut shop! Much like a smaller version of Krispy Kreme, you can see the conveyor working, dropping the donuts into the oil, being flipped over and then scooped out, drained and then on to be decorated. The main difference here is the flavors that were available - green tea, a very unappealing green mint frosting with strange looking chocolate drops on it, peanut butter creme was another option, and one I wanted to try but they were out of, was almond! Yummy! The store hadn't been open long and the novelty had evidently not yet worn off - the lines were 30 people deep! So, we waited, and got our plain glazed, donuts, peanut creme, and oreo creme donuts and headed back to the hotel to devour them!
Peanut creme was pretty sickly after the second bite, plain were pretty good, and I didn't taste the oreo - something on my list of things to do!

The next few days were spent exploring the island, checking out stores and other things we would need to make our move our here easier.

Today we went to Clark Quay on the Singapore River. By this stage we were all craving some good Mexican food. We had supper at Cafe Iguana, overlooking the water. It was a very nice evening, with a gentle breeze. I suppose the ceiling fan and wall fan helped too....
Anyway, we all had fajitas and while it helped satisfy our hunger for Mexican food, it was by no means great food, and we all agreed that we needed to open up a branch of our local Ole's! After supper we walked along the "riverwalk" and took in some sights. A wedding couple were having their photo's taken at the fountains which I found very strange. Her dress was soaked and looking rather icky, but they seemed to be having fun being the center of attention to hundreds of diners!

Some of the restaurants offered some rather strange seating options. C-clinic has painted old wheelchairs gold and were using those along with hospital cots with bunches of throw pillows for seating. The lighting was overhead surgery room lighting and you could have your drink brought to you in an IV to suck out of - yuck!!!!!! It got lots of stares, people taking pictures, but we saw only one or two people seated there. Another restaurant had claw-foot bathtubs scattered about inside - not sure what went on in that restaurant!

We did the touristy thing and caught the boat tour of the river. It was short - thank heavens since it started pouring rain while we were out there, and I wasn't feeling to ggod being out on the water in all that wind, lightening and rain! It was a covered boat so we didn't get wet thought.

While Rory was at the office this morning, the girls and I got a bunch of clothes packed and then went to the shopping center across the road from the hotel. I think we got lost the moment we walked through the entance! It was like a maze - after wandering around for a hour or two, not knowing where we were, we eventually came out on the opposite side and had to walk right around the mall to get the the hotel - a beating in the hot sun! Considering our options I still think we made the best choice - we could still be lost in there!! We went to relax by the pool until Rory came back. I was chatting to a "older" Britich lady sitting on the lounger next to mine. She had been on a 3½ month cruise, around the world! The ship had broken down in Singapore and they had been "stuck" there for 4 days. It was a cruise for "over 50's" which explained all the old grumpy people hovering in the lobby each morning! She told me all about their trip so far - sounded wonderful - and that she had a house in the south of France, and that they were frustrated about not being able to get on with the trip and get home since three months was a long time to be away from hom and they were very homesick - phew! I have to admit - it was a tad bit difficult to feel sorry for her! She was very nice though and we chatted about moving countries, and that her son was a producer for MTV and that he lived in Austin, Texas.
Juat about every time we went down to the pool there was this old Chinese guy that would walk circles in the pool, all round the edge. He would just keep going and going - never said a word to anyone, just walked and walked.
Tuesday afternoon, after Rory returned from the office, we went to visit Little India. Hmmm. A little too much India for my liking! We checked out some stores and caught a taxi back to Chinatown!!! Had some more Satay for lunch, bought some more gifts and called it a day.

Last night we ordered room service for the girls and Rory and I ate at the Japanese restaurant in Raffles City. Rory does not eat fish - not unless it battered, fried, doesn't look like fish or smell like fish! Well......he had SUSHI !!!! I was shocked, and very proud of him for trying it. We had some california rolls, which unfortuantely had roe on them, which I can't stomach. But, seeing that Rory was being brave, I couldn't exactly turn them away. So, I munched on, dousing them in soy sauce, smiling and swigging them down with white wine! We had a couple of other fishy dishes that didn't amount to much, left, marched off down the corridor and each had three scoops of Ben & Jerry's ice-cream! Yummmmmmy!

Our flight from Singapore left at 7am so we had to check in by 5am. An early morning, just as we had got the whole jet-lag / time-change thing down! We made use of the admirals lounge and had some breakfast and read some over-priced magazines that I would never buy for myself! Rory and I sat together on the flight and left the kids to do there thing a few rows in front of us. They slept most of the time, and then kept the flight attendants busy bringing them snakc and drinks! We rested in the lounge again between flights, and tried to get our seats changed. They had us spread out over business class. Luckily two people offered to switch so we could all sit together. I coudln't sleep at all and played a lot of Tetris, Sudoku and solitiare! We left Japan at 4pm and got home at 3pm after flying 13 hours ~ felt very strange!!!