Summer in Singapore

Hello! Soooo...lots has been going on since my last update! Here are some pictures to give you an idea.

First off, here are the pictures of the event I talked about in my last post, the Sex and the City 2 movie awesomeness :)

Yes, that's a martini glass full of free-flow M&Ms :)

Not a very clear picture, but you get the idea. Super classy!

Before I go further, I should mention that the biggest thing I did in this last month or so was my TRIP TO KOREA! If you haven't heard about it, ask me about it because it was great! Some of the highlights were the biggest department store in the world, a stunning seaside temple, a HUGE live seafood market, a Korean-style spa/sauna.public bath, karaoke, and LOTS of AWESOME food.

I'm not going to post a lot of pictures or info on it here, because I've already spent a million hours organizing, uploading, tagging, and captioning my photos on Facebook!  So go there for more details:

Seoul Album:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2443893&id=9620356&l=3edeae0441

 

Busan Album:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2443889&id=9620356&l=e3d4af19e4
Another fun thing was my friend Cheney's birthday party. She was turning 21 and her boyfriend organized this huge surprise party for her. She starting crying when she walked in! Happy tears, of course. And he had this super-fancy cupcake cake made up.

They're so cute.

The other fun thing I went to was a Fourth of July party (actually on the Third of July!) thrown by the American Association of Singapore. It was raining the whole day, and the party was outside, although they had a lot of huge tents set up. Everybody was crowded under the tents and things were muddy and foggy, but it was still fun. It stopped raining in time for FIREWORKS! Which is really why I went haha.

That was the biggest hot dog I'd even seen. I'd already eaten a third of it at that point! Definitely can't compare to a Chicago dog, but it was edible. Mmmm tastes like America!

Finally, a little Engrish for your viewing pleasure ;)

FIRST DAY OF WORK!

So I started my new job on Monday, and it went really well! First of all, I looked really cute :)

I had an orientation with OHR at 9, and then a meeting with my boss at 10:30, followed by lunch with her and two of her/our colleagues, and then I did some errands before our 2:00 meeting with the other Research Assistand and some of our student coders. (I'm basically a research assistant, but my technical title here is "Project Officer".) Everyone was so helpful!  The orientation was really informative and I got a whole packet full of info on salary matters, health benefits, setting up my accounts, finishing up my employment pass stuff, etc.

My boss, Tan Ying Ying (Tan is the last name, Ying Ying is the first), is really great. She's pretty young and just really interesting and open and very smart. I'm excited to be working with her. We had a kind of orientation of our own about the project, and then I got set up in my office. It's AWESOME! And the secretary, Maya, is incredibly helpful, and they gave me all sorts of office stationary stuff, and, well, here:

In the last few days I've spiced it up a little bit more:

Still need more pictures of people for the bulletin board, by the way. I realized I don't have any good ones of my sisters or my neice and nephew. Probably print of some FB photos sometime soon to put up there.

Our meeting at 2 went well, although we were having software problems. But we got them all worked out and got the software copied and sent out to our student coders in the next few days.

Oh, and here are a few more work pics:

View from a walkway outside my office.

My super long hallway. This is right near the elevator, and my office is all the way at the end of tha hall. Room 46 :)

The rest of this week, I haven't really done a lot of WORK work other than that. I've been running around making sure all my stuff is set up and organizing my office and getting my Employment Pass stuff settled, not to mention other sundry details of moving back just last week. Some other highlights include eating lunch with my friend Jocelyn who's a student here, getting asked to lunch my a colleague whom I have just met two days before, and continuing to look super cute ;)

Oh, and also monsoon rains while I was headed to work Tuesday and Wednesday. Ugh.

Actually, getting this blog up and catching up on uploading my Facebook albums is are some of the few final things on my "Get Back Settled In and Caught Up" list of things to do. The big ones still left are to see about getting my computer and my iPod fixed. For some reason, they both just randomly stopped working the day before and the day of my flight to Singapore! And, on the WORK list of things to do, I'm finally down to only one thing that's and errand, and the rest is all actually WORK! That's exciting!

The only other major thing is setting up plans with my friends that I haven't yet seen since I've been back. And speaking of friends that I HAVE seen since I've been back, the most interesting thing I've done since I've been back was probably going out to a private showing of Sex and the City 2 with a bunch of expat women :) Kathryn invited me. We got a cosmo, champagne, and free flow soft drinks and popcorn and M&Ms. And we looked good. Unfortunately, I am being informed that I JUST reached my maximum file storage quota,a nd I have to pay for more storage. and yet there's some problem with my account and the pictures won't upload. SOOO, pictures of that later. Or else I'll just put them on Facebook and add a link here.

Tonight-US vs Slovenia soccer game at 10 PM with some American friends.
Tomorrow: Bak kut teh ( garlicky pork ribs soup that I really like) for breakfast, North Indian food for dinner with our friends Shreya and Indrajeet, Skype with John Stuart.
Sunday: Church. Beerfest with friends Karthi and Beatrix.

Gonna be a great weekend to end a great week!

Goodbye America!

Well, I'm back again. It seems like only yesterday that I wrote my "goodbye Singapore" post! I had a great time when I was back home. I didn't take as many pictures as I should have--I have a bad habit of not taking pictures when I'm stateside. Anyway, there won't be any pictures on this entry, because

1) I'm not unpacked yet, and my camera is out of batteries, and my camera charger is somewhere in my luggage and I can't find it right now, and I can't unpack yet because I'm still at Dan's house. 
2) I have already uploaded some pictures on my computer, but right now my computer is broken. I don't know what's wrong with it, but it keeps shutting down right after I turn it on, supposedly to protect it against some threat or something. I don't speak computer, so I'll just have to bring it in sometime this week I guess.

So yeah. I'm writing this on Dan's computer. And I'm still at Dan's house because I got really sick the morning of my flight, which was awful, and I'm just getting better now, so I've just been staying at Dan's place these last few days and sleeping all the time.

But the main point of this post is just to summarize what I was up to while I was home! Which was actually mostly pretty boring, in an awesome way.

I spent the first three weeks in Lombard, catching up with my family, and also my friends who were in town. I didn't take a SINGLE picture. Sorry :(

After three weeks of that, I went to Norman, OK, for two weeks to hang out with some of my college friends. My roommate from last year, Julia, let me sleep in her living room for two weeks, which was awesome of her. I had a great time there, because it was all of the fun of college without any of the work! Plus, I was able to go the the Music Festival and the May Day Arts Fair. I saw one or two people every day, which was pretty crazy. I was actually pleasantly surprised at how many of my friends were still in town! And I ate at all my favorite restaurants ;) I did take a couple of pictures in Oklahoma which I will add later--but they're not all that exciting, so don't get your hopes up!

Then I came back to Lombard for 10 days, mostly to hang out with my sister Bobbie, who hadn't been home when I was there earlier. I also celebrated my birthday--yay for being 23 years old!

After that I went to Virginia for the next 10 days to help my sister with her new baby! I was actually hoping to be there when she was born, but I ended up being two days late! Oh well. The new baby's name is Elizabeth Rose Cox. I was there basically to keep Christopher entertained and try to keep the house clean so Beth didn't go crazy. There are TONS of pictures of Elizabeth on my facebook profile--
here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2424402&id=9620356&l=d4d3e8d144 
and here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2424819&id=9620356&l=b0acd827d8 
and here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2427027&id=9620356&l=d4128ca26a

Then I came home for one more week! Hung out a bit more with family and got ready to go home. I also went to two weddings--Matt and Renee Begale and Joe and Maggie Sokoll! I do have pictures of those and I will be posting them here and on Facebook as soon as I can access my photos :) I also drove out the Rochelle with Laura and we spent the night at Deb and Justin Ahlgrim's awesome house. That was tons of fun! Yay for sleepovers!


Then I packed up and left. Boo/yay. Boo that I have to leave because I had a great time and I will miss every one at home. But yay because I also missed Dan a lot and I was so glad to see him, and I'm excited about starting my new job and catching up with my friends here and getting back into a routine. I've also got a whole list of interesting goals and activities for the next four months, heehee. That'll be exciting! Plus I'm going to try to travel more this year! So that's a pretty big yay, actually. YAY!

Singrish: Third Installment of Interesting Language use in the Lion City

Welcome to my Engrish Blog #3! I have some gems here, people--such as the fun little picture above. Dan didn't know why I thought it was hilarious. :) I had so many pictures on file that I actually had to cut some that weren't funny enough! Hopefully you agree with my judgements on level or hilarity. Let's begin, shall we?

FIRST CATEGORY: Typos. And the Nominees are:

The "Writer Draw 'n Scpape". Way simpler than "Etch-a-sketch", right?

Elmo on a change purse, encouraging Clean teeteh for cosmetic reasons. Who doesn't love clean teeteh, right?

 No caption needed.

NEXT CATEGORY: What's on the Menu?

Wow. That description really helps.

Someone is a little too enthusiastic about their soft drinks.

CATEGORY 3: That must have been made in China...

 On a box for a laptop holder.

This next photo is of a box of tissue that my landlords had in the living room. They speak English, but somehow I don't think they even realized what this said. If so, I would like to think that they would have bought a different box of tissues...

I just don't get it. Is the bored-looking pink-and-yellow cow supposed to be sexy? Sooooo confused...




These next few don't have categories--but don't worry, they're funny all on their own.

This is one of my favorites. It's grammatically correct I know, but still!  Look at the little Smurf-like silhouette! And I'm kind of saddened/worried that this needs to be posted on bulletin boards...

Yes, that says "Steve Florist". That's the name of the shop. Not "Steve's Florist Shop", not "Steve's Flowers", not "Flowers by Steve", not even "Steve: Florist". Just "Steve Florist". The flowers were pretty though...

Speaking of funny shop signs, what about this one:

Don't you ever get tired of all those boring, stick-in-the-mud tailors? Do you find yourself wishing for a suitor AND a suit maker? Well, look no further! There's a Romantic tailor right this way!

Note: This sign is correctly translated. The name of the shop in Chinese is "Luo mon dee ke" (say it fast, it sounds like Romantic)  Tailor. Maybe a more accurate rendering would be "ROMANTIC Tailoring" or something like that...

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha...*wipes away a tear of laughter* Hoo..haaa...heeeheehee

FINAL (and most hilarious) CATEGORY: T-shirts of awesomeness.

You think this shirt is funny? Just you wait for the next one.

HERO of monkey! My name is Sunny! jeag jeag!

And the cream of the crop for this edition (in my humble opinion):

                                 I have nothing to say.

                                 Except, maybe, WTF?

Goodbye Singapore!

Hello fellow netizens! Long time no blog :( Sorry about that. Most of you will know that I'm currently Stateside for two months, but there is some catching up do on what I was up to those last 6 weeks in Singapore and I'd like to do it here. Before we get into that, I'd like to mention again my current schedule: Flying to Oklahoma April 24-May 8. Back in Lombard until May 19th, when I fly to Virginia until May 29th. Then back in Lombard one last time from May 29-June 7 before I fly back to Singapore. So if you want to make sure to see me when I'm in your area, let me know! Email and Facebook are good, and I have my old cell phone number again so a call or text would work too.

Now that the administrative stuff is out of the way, on to recap of mid-February through March in Singapore!

My American friends Chris and Kathryn had a beautiful dinner party in February (can't remember the exact date), but here are some photos.

I'm not the best documenter, so this is an after dinner shot.

Wine, grapes, cheese, crackers...and Apples to Apples.

The best hand of the evening, by far!

Some people might have heard me mention durian, a fruit that grows mainly in Southeast Asia that doesn't really taste like a fruit. It's hard to describe its appearance and even harder to describe its taste, but suffice it to say that while it's an acquired taste, I've acquired it and think it's awesome. Can't you tell by my face?

Here's the inside:

You eat that yellow part, and then inside the yellow part there's a seed (that you don't eat). Kathryn says it tastes like a "tree egg". Hmmm...

Scar on my finger from where I got cut when I was opening up a durian. Ironically, it happened like one minute after Mr. Ling said "Be careful". I suck at life. 

In early March I had my friend Pearline over for dinner one day, and the food turned out really well!

Thai spicy vegetable curry. Mmmm...

Then the picture ABOVE is dhal--yellow lentils in the Indian style. (I had to buy new spices, but it was totally worth it!)

 Finally, my favorite green vegetable, kang kong, or kong xin cai, both of which translate into "hollow heart vegetable" (because the stalks are hollow, kind of like a dandylion stem). Cooked in the Chinese style with garlic and oyster sauce.


There was a music festival in Singapore in mid-March. Dan and I went to see the Lionel Loueke jazz trio, which was really good! (It's African-indused jazz. Yes, i know all jazz is African-infused; I mean more African-infused than jazz in general.) We got dressed up, went to an Italian restaurant beforehand, just had a nice date in general. The photo's a bit blurry but I think it's cute:

A week before I left, I met up with my friend Dianne--she's from Malaysia, we met at OU, and now she's working in Singapore as well. She gets to work in the most beautiful building in Singapore, lucky duck. (I've posted about it before--see the end of this post: http://cmcastelli.blogspot.com/2009/10/greek-costumes-from-bali-lane-on-arab.html ) I'd never seen the inside lobby before, so she took me in, and it's AWESOME. Coolest part? There's a bar in it with a three-story-tall mine rack, and when you order a bottle of wine, they lift a girl dressed as a fairy up on a wire to reach it!!!!! You want proof, you say? Voila!

I know it's blurry and kind of like those Bigfoot sighting photos, but that's her, the fairy, flying to grab a bottle of wine. I wonder how you get that job?

Dianne and I were in Arab street, and there's this old-fashioned store/children's museum. So obviously we took some photos :)

We also ate dessert at this Arabic-type shop:

We sat on the rug and there were pillows and everything, and the tea set and spoons and everything was so cute! New favorite dessert spot in Singapore...

Here is my empty office as I was moving out! Tear...I'm going to miss my little cubbyhole desk and the NUS campus and my boss and my officemates and my gym and my friends here. BUT, I still live nearby, and I'm sure after a litle while at NTU I will like it there just as well.

A few days before I left, Dan and I went to see How to Train Your Dragon, which was AWESOME! I highly recommend it. The 3D glasses in Singapore are super high tech. (You have to pay $150 if you lose them or break them. Eek!)

 Yeah, we're hard core...in our 3D glasses...and our regular glasses...watching a kids movie...at 10 in the morning...

Last day in Singapore? Finished up some laundry and packing, ate lunch at Dan's house with Chris and Kathryn. Then they taught us how to play bridge, and we taught them how to find and eat delicious durian. (It's a special type of durian which is only available for a short period of time in the spring but it's my FAVORITE and I wanted to have some before I left.) MMMMM durian!

The I boarded the plane early Sunday morning, April 4th, and had a perfect flight home--no delays, a tailwind that brought us into Chicago an hour early, and interesting and fun people sitting next to me. I was translating for a nice Chinese couple on the Tokyo to Chicago flight, that was fun! So, I arrive safe and sound, just in time for Easter dinner.

Things to look forward to SOON, I promise: A new Engrish blog. This one is gonna be awesome. Also, a recap of my first few weeks back in the USA! And Oklahoma people, heads up: you're next!

Happy Chinese New Year! 恭喜发财！

Hello friends!

Last weekend (Feb. 12-14) was a holiday weekend here--and no, I'm not talking about Valentine's Day, whose normally tenuous but noticeable appeal in the Lion City was quashed by a holiday of the truest sort. I speak, of course, of Chinese New Year, a holiday which inspires Singaporeans of all stripes to think of the true meaning of the season--wait, what is the meaning of Chinese New Year, you ask? Well, besides the fact that it's a New Year (which doesn't really apply anymore, now that everything runs on the Western calendar)--not much of anything really. The main event is having parties and family reunions. Think of a combination of regular New Year and Thanksgiving...

 

Oranges and red packets, two of the pillars of CNY.

What Chinese New Year means to Singaporeans, as far as I can tell:
1) Repaying your debts (which also means nagging people who owe you money to pay you back),
2) Cleaning your house and putting potted plants outside3) Buying new clothes
4) Buying and cooking unimaginable amounts of food
5) Buying pretty much everything else as well, no matter how unimaginably crowded every single mall is
6) Seeing relatives, if they live in Singapore (or maybe Malaysia or Australia). Otherwise, meh.
7) Red Packets! i.e. getting free money (if you're a "kid"--kid meaning "unmarried")
8) Money that you have to give to all your relatives' kids and all your kid's friends (once you're married)
9) Oranges.

Yup, I think that just about covers it. 

 

Me, really enjoying this Red Packet thing :)

 

This is a bowl of Long Life Noodles, the traditional dish that you eat on New Year's morning. It's pretty good--chicken soup with noodles and wood ear mushrooms and fried hard-boiled eggs--mmm, look at that yummy egg. Yes, I did say fried and hard-boiled. They hard-boil it first and then fry it so it has that nice crisp coating. Then they put it in the soup so the yolk's all soft an awesome. Mmmmm....

 

Dan's uncle and cousin came into town from Melbourne for a week or so, so our CNY basically consisted of all of us eating several huge meals and lots of special New Year's cookies and chips (pineapples tarts--awesome! Google them...) We also went to my friend Katherine's house, which is near Chinatown, and overlooked/overheard the big celebrations, but I did not attend. It sounded too much like a parade. (Shudder.) But here are some of the beautiful New Year's decorations in Chinatown!

However, for lunch on New Year's Day we went out, because Merry had basically been cooking nonstop for days, and can you guess where we went? I'll give you a hint, here's their logo:

...

Indian food! Good guess! (Did you think that was a Italian man tossing a pizza? Yes, so did I. And I continue to think so every time I see the sign...)

Because of course none of the Chinese people were working and most restaurants were closed. So we went to our favorite prata restaurant down the street. Prata is a type of round Indian flatbread kind of like a pita, but fried. Hence the pizza-esque logo. 

And of course, we did have a small shout-out to Valentine's Day. Dan got me the Glee soundtrack (YAY) and a specialty Lavender-flavored chocolate bar from the Chocolate Research Facility. I made him an American breakfast (bacon, omelettes, pancakes) and a cake!

Please don't judge me poorly on my cake-making skills. The first time you try to flip, frost, and decorate a cake in a non-airconditioned, tropical environment, you will understand my pain. Basically, the cake doesn't stay together well (notice the horizontal crater cleverly disguised by frosting and the word "Valentine's" in the middle) and the frosting melts off. I had to keep the cake refrigerated at all times or else those chocolate chips would have slid right off the edges...

We were going to have a Valentine's Day lunch, but what with a late American breakfast one day and prata the next, we ran out of time.

Sorry, I didn't do very well at documenting the event in pictures--but I tried to make up for it by actually editing my pictures this time, so they're slightly more aesthetically pleasing!

Cultural Addendum: Attempt at African Food

I realized I had promised a blog update on my recent Facebook status about African food. I had seen this African food restaurant a couple of months ago when driving around and had been hoping to try it. Dan didn't seem to excited about the idea, so I decided to go with my new American friends Kathryn and Chris. They live just a few minutes walk away, according to Googlemaps, so I met them at their house and we walked over together. HOWEVER, when we got to where Googlemaps said the restaurant was, which also looked familiar to when I'd seen the restaurant before, there was no restaurant. We walked around all the nearby streets and alleys for about 15 minutes looking for it (and it was pretty hot outside), and we asked two people--Indian people, because we were in Little India--where the African restaurant was, and they both said they had no idea what we were talking about. Chris saved the day because he saw some African people sitting at a cafe and went to ask them where the African restaurant was. They informed us that the restaurant used to be there but had recently closed (thank goodness, I was starting to think I was crazy). Boo. But they said there was another African restaurant not too far away, yay! Sooo we walked to that one. It was a pretty long walk, in the heat. Then we got there, and it was Northern African/Middle Eastern food...i.e. Egyptian type-stuff. And it was practically empty and they menu only had about 10 things on it and it was overpriced and it looked kind of like a front for the Northern African mafia or something...so eventually we just went across the street and ate briyani and then followed it up with boring old Tiger beers. Oh well, at least the briyani was good! Not every adventure can be a complete success I guess. One thing that was a success-I caught the final MRT back to my house by only two minutes, so that was nice! And that was the attempt at African food. As far as I know there are not other African restaurants in Singapore. I guess I'll have to go back to the US to try some--who's up for African food between April 4 and June 7, which are the official dates that I'm gonna be Stateside? Hit me up!