Tokyo

I haven't blogged in months! AHHH I'M A BAD INTERNET PERSON! Oh well, at least I have vacations to keep me from falling completely off the bandwagon.

I wrote this log post on the bullet train on our way from Tokyo to Kyoto, meaning to post it as soon as we got there, but I forgot. Sorry! I added to photos later, obviously. More photos to come on Facebook, and keep watch for a new The Original Engrish post from Japan :)

Tokyo is awesome. I highly recommended that you visit. These last few days have been action-packed and the cherry blossoms (sakura) lend an almost magical air to most things.

Kathryn and I are great travel partners. She likes planning and is good at navigating. I'm easygoing. So it works out ;-) Also, we both want to see similar things, sleep the same amount, and move at the same pace.

Some of the highlights have been:
A fantastic sakura-flavored ice cream cone

The most beautiful garden I've ever seen (or at least top 3) filled with cherry blossoms in bloom, Japanese bridges, and tea houses.
A chance to do a tea ceremony in a famous tea ceremony house with an awesome Japanese lady who invited us cuz she thought we looked interested and she taught us all the special stuff.
A thrift store called Chicago where we put together our Ultimate Kimonos and looked awesome. And I also bought a pretty dress.

The best coffee shop in Tokyo, called Cafe de L'ambre. I can't even begin to describe the awesomeness of thus place. The only way I can do it justice is to say that it is the coffee shop that you dream of opening. Kathryn had Sumatra coffee. I had sweet coffee topped with egg yolk. We both shared a coffee liquid pudding. Pictures will follow. DO NOT go to Tokyo without getting the business card from me.

Miss Saigon

 So I was just in Vietnam--Saigon in particular, which is now technically called Ho Chi Minh City, even though most locals still refer to it as Saigon. (The Communist government changed it after the war.) It was lunar New Year, which is the biggest holiday in Vietnam, which was GREAT because there were a few big celebrations.events to attend that you would be able to see any other time of the year. However, it was also a bit inconvenient because a lot of normal attractions--for instance, the HUGE indoor market downtown, the Opera House, and many regular restaurants and shops including my Vietnamese friend's favorite restaurant--were closed for the days I was there. However, there was still PLENTY to do. Since I have a full 58 photo album going uo on Facebook right now, I think I'll still with a list format and maybe a couple of anecdotes. :)

While in Vietnam I:
*Watched fireworks at midnight in my pajamas in the middle of the street with other revelers, foreign and local. (Well, they were fully dressed. I was the only one in my pjs.)
*Walked a LOT in flip flops and discovered that I need to go to the chiropractor because my shoes are wearing unevenly.
*Looked at SO MANY flowers. Apparently Vietnamese people effing love flowers around New Year.

*Went to the Fine Arts Museum
*Ate french onion soup and a chicken and goat cheese crepe at a nice French restaurant
*Actually wrote postcards and sent them from the country that I was supposed to send them from!
*Learned how to say hello, thank you, Happy New Year, and "hey friend" in Vietnamese
*Met a girl from Germany and shared a round of AK-47 ammo with her and spent the rest of the day shopping
*Realized in the Cu Chi tunnels that I'm just sliiiiiightly claustrophobic...
*Held a giant snake around my neck
*Ate three bowls of pho. All of which were (varying degrees of) delicious. Of course, the best one I had was at the place on the corner packed with locals.
*Ate Vietnamese shrimp salad rolls, which I am in love with and think I could eat every day for the rest of my life.
*Met up with two girls from London who I met while waiting for the sunrise at Angkor Wat, and went to dinner at a delicious gourmet Vietnamese restaurant called Lemongrass
*Practiced my map reading skills and didn't get (more than a block) lost the whole time I was there.
*Rowed a canoe. But not really because I was pretty useless compared to the people who were actually rowing us around.
*Ate at Pizza Hut
*Flirted with a cute pho-stand operator who spoke pretty good English. Almost tried to convince him to convince his parents (whose stall it was) to show me how to make Vietnamese coffee, but if I had I would have been late for church
*Went to church (the English service) at the beautiful Notre Dame cathedral downtown.
*Met a new Singaporean friend who was on vacation with her family who I'm going to meet up with for dinner next week.
*Rode around in a cyclo, which is like a bike with a chair on the front end that the passenger sits in while someone (usually an old guy, all the young guys have motorbikes) pedals you around town. And got super ripped off.
*Rode on a motorcycle taxi--twice--and didn't get ripped off either time! Go me and my mad bargaining skills! And managed to take pictures on the bike and not fall off/drop anything/get anything stolen by the cowboy bagsnatchers--see?

*Almost bought a beautiful tea set which was a steal at about $18. But didn't, and I'm glad I didn't, because I need to stop collecting stuff that's bulky and breakable, making it hard to transport
*Bought a jade bangle, which I've been wanting for a long time and am very happy with.
*Washed some of my clothes in the sink with hand soap because my (limited supply of) clothes were all becoming very sweaty from long days of having fun.
*Got left behind by my tour bus on the side of the road. Yes, that happened. We stopped for a bathroom break, about 1 hour from Saigon and 1.5 hours from our Mekong destination, for a bathroom break and to look through some touristy craft shop. When I came back from the bathroom, my bus was GONE. Yes, gone. Thankfully, a couple other tours had stopped there from the same thing, so I went up to some of the other tour guides looking all pitiful and said "My bus left meeee! (Pouty face)" And thankfully a super sweet tour guide let me join her group, as long as I promised to keep it a secret otherwise she would get in trouble. She was only 24 and sat and chitchatted with me for awhile, and she's super nice and I got her contact information so that we can keep in touch. And that group was really cool and fun to be with throughout the day, and all made good-natured fun of my for getting lost, and a couple of the middle-aged people kept a lookout for me when we went place to place so I didn't get lost again! haha. It was nice. 

Wow. That's a lot of things in 3.5 days. No wonder the week felt SO LONG and why I was SO TIRED when I got back. But long and tiring in a good way :) Me at the airport, leaving, carrying all my stuff, looking tired but satisfied.

Holiday in Cambodia

Hello friends! Long time since my last update, and I figure if I don't update now I might never get a Cambodia blog post on here. However, I AM paying by the minute here, plus you never want to spent too much of a portion of your vacation online, an the internet is so slow that uploading photos at this time just isn't practical. Therefore, here is the short version! Feel free to ask for further details ;-) And I'm sure a Facebook album for photos will come up sometime soonish.

I left Singapore at 6 AM Sunday morning and arrived in Siem Reap, Cambodia at 7:05 in the morning. The tuk-tuk driver picked me up--most transportation here is either by tuk-tuk, which is a motorcyle with an open car attached to the back of it that seats 2, or some of the biugger ones seat 4 if they have seats facing both sides. The hostel was AWESOME and took care of tons of things for me. My driver's name was Set, and he drover me around basically for two days and he was super nice and cute and tiny and respectful--not vaguely creepy/smarmy like many of the young drivers who won't stop flirting with you EVER. He's 24 and he just got married last month to a 16 year old. Weird. So the main attraction in Siem Reap is the Angkor temples and I spent a lot of time there. And I just realized that I only have 7 minutes of internet left, so the rest of this post is going to have to be in list format.

SO FAR I HAVE:
Spent about 5 hours riding in tuk-tuks
Learned how to say hello, thank you, and yes in Khmer
Seen a LOT of lovely, intricate, old, beautiful temples. I actually like the older ones better than Angkor Wat, which is the most famous and best preserved, but I like feeling like I'm walking through ruins. More "secret garden" style.
Speaking of that, this whole country is basically one "secret garden" moment after another
Gotten two massages
Convinced the massage staff at the hostel to teach me how to do the massage by paying for two people at a time, one to show me and another to be the model. Since it's only $3 an hour I figured I could handle the cost! :)
Thrown two small bottles on a traditional Khmer pottery wheel, which I got to keep. I mean, I had to pay to keep them of course, but super worth it and SO COOL! You actually have to spin the wheel with your foot--it makes it hard to center the clay and definitely takes some practice.
Gone to the Royal Palace
Spent 6 hours on a bus
Taken a Khmer cooking class.

Tomorrow is all the depressing stuff, and then on to Vietnam! One minute of internet to spare, must upload! More soon!

Singrish 3, and some unique Singaporean signage...

 This is a slightly unconventional Singrish post--not all of these are grammatically incorrect, so much as they are strange or incongruous to the American eye. So let's start with something pretty familiar, shall we? The Korean-import notebook is a reliable start.

The small print says "Would you like some flavors that make your mouth come alive/something to set your mouth on fire". Kind of poetic, actually.

I don't even remember what this is! A money pouch or something, I think. Same for the sample below, "Handsome Min Splash". Love it!

 

Classic Chinese-style: "doesn't-really-matter-what-this-shirt-says-English-words-are-cool-right?" 

 

Actually, I think we might have these in the States too. Yes, I figured out that it's supposed to be Bump-its, but doesn't it just look like Bum Pits at first glance?

This just struck me as weird. Maybe no one else will see it, but doesn't it look like the DragonQuest cutout and the Marriage Central one are somehow related? It looks like the scheming dragon is saying, "Yes, dear, say I do to a happy marriage. And then I will kill you and roast you over a spit. Or maybe throw this orb at you, or whatever it is dragons do in this game. Mwahahaha!"

This next one is PRICELESS. I held up people coming out of the restroom behind me to take this photo because it is SO. WEIRD. The top of the word is cut off, but if you can't tell it says "Gentlemen". I.e. this is the sign on the entrance to the men's bathroom. I hope I'm not the only one who thinks this looks like a woman. Kind of like Pink, actually, if the hair weren't black.  I mean, he has full red lips, black-lines eyes, and the standard lesbian/Bieber haircut. I think those boob-shadows are supposed to be pec shadows, but come on people!

And finally, a quote, with a fitting reminder that this post is all in good fun, and that I love and welcome the variations that English takes on.

English is a language composed almost wholly of other languages--only 1% of words in daily use today are descended from the Old English of 1000 years ago. The abundance of Scandinavian, German, Latin, French, and Greek vocabulary and grammar that the language has absorbed is astonishing. That flexibility is one of the things that makes it a fitting global language in today's world. I find it humorous that this quote was on display in support of the government's Speak Good English campaign, which tells Singaporeans that their personalized version of English is not a legitimate variety, but "bad" English rife with mistakes. However, this quote is saying the exact opposite of what whoever put it up their thinks it means. They think it means "The English language doesn't belong to you, so don't mess it up." What it's really saying is "The English language belongs to itself, to the minds of every person who uses it and shapes it." (That's how the author meant it too--he's an esteemed poet and playwright from the Caribbean.) Please, when reading these posts, don't think "Oh, those Singaporeans/Chinese/etc. can't speak English! How quaint." I definitely don't mean it that way, as a linguist or as someone living abroad in a global world. Instead, I hope that when you read this you enjoy a laugh at something that strikes your eye as strange, consider the near-poetry or the resourcefulness that is shown, and appreciate how we live in a global world where languages is nobody's special property, but the property of the imagination.

Assorted August through October... :/

Hello my dearest friends! So, there was a good span of time this fall that I didn't write any posts. And then recently I discovered some photo gems from the time period that it would be a shame not to post. Therefore, this is a hodgepodge of interesting stuff I've fallen into. I'll keep the text to a minimun and let the pictures to the talking :)

Random guys dressed up as storm troopers downtown. There we 5 or 6 of them, and they were just kid of milling around and taking pictures with people if they asked. And this was like late August, so it was nowhere near Halloween AND super hot.

Some of you might remember my lantern festival/mid-auturm festival post from last year. (I know I should embed the link, but I'm not very tech-savvy and actually don't know how to do it, so here it is just copied and pasted: http://cmcastelli.blogspot.com/2009/10/mid-autumn-festival-thanksgiving-of.html)

So this year, it's kind of the same. They did have a big display downtown on the river that was nice--they had all the zodiac animals, and this is me in front of my sign, the rabbit.

They also had these really pretty larger "lanterns", which represented traditional works of Chinese literature.

 They also had a lantern festival on-campus, and they gave out free lanterns! I took the pink one ;)

 I went with my friend Hiram, who is in my department at school. They had a little tea ceremony booth, so this is him drinking a teeeeny cup of tea. Sorry for the awkward lighting...:/

We also met some friends--her name is Joanna. Unfortunately I can't remember her husband's name, oops! They helped us try to answer the questions on a quiz about the festival. But they were pretty hard! And we actually got most of them wrong, mostly because we weren't really paying attention and just wanted to get some little prize you got when you completed it. But then since we didn't get all the questions right, they didn't give us the prizes! So kiasu...haha.

Another thing I did was take a day trip to Malaysia on one of our holidays and randomly decide to get my ears double peirced! hahaha. Unfortunately, the whole reason I had never gotten double peircings before was that I have very sensistive ears, and even my regular piercings give me trouble and I seldom wear earrings in them. But I'd started wearing these cute smiley face studs and they hadn't been bothering me, so I was overconfident. After 6 weeks I tried to switch out the earrings, and they got all swollen and gross, and so I had to let them close up. But in this picture I didn't know that any of that would happen, and I'm all adrenaline and anticipation ;)

I've been spending the occasional weekend at my friend's condo taking care of her bunny when she goes on vacation. While I'm there I always cook a couple of meals, because I don't really have the luxury of a kitchen all to myself in my own place. So one weekend I decided to make pizza, but although the condo does have a "kitchen", it doesn't have an over. So I made it in a pan, oven free! I was pretty proud of my resourcefulness. And I made the dough and the sauce from scratch! Doesn't it look delicious?

Ooh another fun thing! In late July, David Choi came to Singapore! He's a very popular musicain who I follow on Singapore. He signed my CD and took a picture with me. He was really good, and my friends Jocelyn and Shermeen and Yi En accompanied me, so it was a really fun night.

I also went to a rug auction at a fancy hotel. If you are eve in Singapore on a Sunday afternoon and you think to yourself "I'd like to find some wealthy expats! I wonder where they would be?" Then you should try to find your local rug auction ;) But it was really fun. I fell in love with this rug, and it was actually "relatively inexpensive". As in, maybe $500 at the least. I still look at the picture sometime and wish I had it :(

Kathryn had a birthday in September. She loves rugs (hence why I was at a rug auction in the first place!) so I got her two Oriental Rug mousepads ;) I bought them at THE MOST AWESOME SITE EVER, http://www.vat19.com/ . Seriously, if you ever need to buy me a birthday or Christmas present, you should look there first. So, since I was already paying for shipping, I decided to get myself a little present:

GUMMI BEAR ON A STICK! It was delicious.

Oktoberfest

 Hi friends! This post actually doesn't have anything to do with Germany or drinking beer. It just means that this is a summary of the weekend October 23-24 (and a bit of the following week) and I didn't have a better name. Last weekend was CRAZY! And this week wasn't much less busy. Let's start with the photographic evidence, shall we? The first stop was a Durga Puja festival. This is the biggest festivals for Bengalis in the Northeaster part of India, and so my good friends Shreya and Indrajeet invited me along to see the celebration put on by the Bengali Association of Singapore.

 Durga Puja celebrates the 5 days out of every year that Durga, the mother goddess, gets to leave her in-laws home (I don't think Shiva the Destroyer's family sound like they would be very nice!) and hang out with her parents. Every year she journeys in a different fashion, and this year it's in a boat. Hence the boat set-up.

 Me and Vasugi and Shreya. Oh how I wish I had purchased my Indian-style garb in time! Darnit.

 Priests sitting and burning stuff to the goddess up on the boat. There was also a big prayer session right before we ate--kind of a breaking of the fast type of thing. You're not supposed to eat until after it's over, around noon or 1 o'clock, and then you're supposed to only eat vegetarian food.

So my journey there was VERY eventful. First, I stepped off of a ledge kind of funny on my way there, and my shoe broke. But I was already late and 10 minutes walk away from home and didn't really have time to go back and change shoes--so I improvised. 

 Lucky I had a spare ponytail holder with me! And in a semi-corresponding color, too!

 I know, not the classiest thing. But it was surprisingly functional. Although I'm still kind of sad, because I really liked those shoes and I wore them a lot.

I also lost my keychain and card holder on the way there. Thankfully I realized pretty soon and went to the front desk and had them call the other station and they found it and kept it for me! That's twice in one week that you saved my butt, Singapore. I will do my VERY BEST to make sure it doesn't happen again anytime soon. I must have something on my mind making me extra distracted or something.

The next day I went to church with Hannah (Xiao-Zhen) in the morning and we at lunch at Fish and Co--we had fish and chips because we're both addicted to french fries--and then we went to a conference on migrant workers' rights. Hannah's a social worker, so she was actually interested in coming with me, not being dragged along! We talked about a summary of the migrant rights situation that is going to be sent to the 2010 UN Human Rights Review. We looked at the summary and then broke into groups and gave our opinions. A lot of the workers themselves were there and that was really cool. 

 Then later that night I went to a dance show with my friends Hiram and Yao Na. The first part was Japanese dance. It was slightly boring, but this lady had an AWESOME bow on her back.

 And they asked for volunteers to go up at the end and learn part of the dance, so Yao Na and I did it. There's me in the green shirt and Yao Na on my left, your right.

 Then there was the Cambodian dance section, which was way cooler. When I was describing it to my mom, she said "That sounds like that scene from the King and I..." I only vaguely remember that scene, but I do remember monkey dancers, and monkeys definitely figured prominently in this dance. And it would make sense that it would be a similar dance, because Siam is the old name for Thailand, which is right next to Cambodia and has a LOT of cultural similarities. So they didn't make that dance up, they got it quite right! Nice to know. Yay for Rodgers and Hammerstein.

 They also had some adorable little kinds in it, and the kids were SO GOOD! Look how tiny they are! Especially considering that those grown-ups are REALLY small. Like, barely adult size. Southeast Asians are not known for their height...

 Afterwards, there was a line dancing demonstration by the Line Dancing Association of Singapore! Basically a bunch of Singaporean women dressed in cowgirl outfits, line dancing to modern country music--liek atechno version of "Country Roads". Didn't know that existed? It does. But then there was an audience participation part and we did it and they taught us 30 counts of Hello Dolly! Boy was that an experience! My musical theatre training did not fail me, I picked up the steps right quick. :) Here's some of the line dancing (and two adorable little girls semi-following along)

I must have overexerted myself that weekend, because this is literally what my hair looked like when I woke up the next morning:

Ahhhhh!

So that's all the pictures I have for you. But I did continue to have a week chock-full of awesomeness. Wednesday was my first Salsa dance class (I get to start in Beginnger 2 since I have some background), and Thursday was my first POTTERY CLASS! It was awesome. While I struggle to look graceful or sensuous when dancing, I seem to be somewhat of a natural at the wheel, or so the instructors say. Maybe they tell that to all their students, haha ;) But it was an emotionally difficult week, so that was much-needed pick-me-up. I really liked it and I was happy with my progress and I can't wait for my next lesson! Hopefully I'll learn to be less messy along the way, because I had clay ALL OVER ME when I left last time!

On Friday night I went to Kathryn and Chris's house and helped with some delicious Quiche Lorraine. We also began hand grinding cloves for a spice cake because we couldn't found ground cloves at the grocery store, only whole ones! It was a nice, relaxing evening. Saturday I slept until 2 and proceeded to get sick throughout the rest of the day. Today I'm still sick, but I went to church with John and Hannah and ate fries again!--among other things--for lunch.

I have lots of good material for a Singrish post, so keep your eyes peeled this week. I think it's actually going to be an "interesting things you would only see in Singapore" post, as opposed to just Singrish. You'll see what I mean when it goes up.

Sorry for my long absence. But then again, I'm sure all you faithful readers are used to it by now :) Love!

We're going to the zoo, zoo, zoo...

Hello friends! So, if you couldn't tell from the album, the highlight of this post is my recent trip to the Singapore Zoo. But first, a few fun things for you.

 Just in case there's a house in your way and you really need to get rid of it. (In reality it's a moving van, obviously. The Chinese says "Move House", which should probably be translated as something like "Movers".)

In case the word "visible" didn't clue you into the fact that you can see it, they added the "You Can See" just in case. It's kind of redundantly repeating things over again and again... (By the way, this is an advertisement for fruit juice WITH COLLAGEN BITS. Supposedly it's good for your skin. I accidentally bought it once and it's gross, IMHO.)

Okay, so ZOO PICTURES! I went with my friend Pearline and her sister Theng Hoon and her boyfriend Bryan.

Sooooooo cute! I wuv otters. They were making little yipping sounds because it was almost their feeding time.

Baby orangutan! Interestingly enough, "orang utan" is actually a Malay phrase (Singapore is right next to Malaysia) that means "jungle people". They use the word "orang" (people) to refer to tribes or family groups.

Rhino conference.

 Obligatory face cutout zoo pictures!

Bryan is very tall, but he's got nothing on a polar bear. (The world largest land carnivore!)

Me in front of the really nice elephant enclosure. They also had these little adorable elephant statues around everywhere:

There were more but I don't want to bore you :)

So yes, that was the Zoo. I had a great time! I'd been meaning to go for awhile and just never got around to it. It was a bit sad though, because the last time I went to the zoo was with Dan and my nephew Chris, so it really made me miss both of them.

I actually went to the zoo last weekend. This past weekend we had a holiday on Monday, Singapore's National Day. So a friend of mine went out of town, but she has a pet rabbit and she needed someone to take care of her while she was gone, so she hired me! I probably would have done it for free, because I got to spend the whole long weekend in a beautiful 1.5 bedroom condominium really near downtown with a gym and a pool, and I had it all to myself. It's about 5 steps up from where I live ;) I really did mean to take pictures of the place and the pool and the bunny!!!! But I forgot. Suffice it to say that the place is clean and spacious, the pool is beautiful, and the bunny is gray and suuuuuper cute!

I had a friend, Dianne, stay over with me Friday night and hang out Saturday. Sunday I went to the big Anglican cathedral downtown for church, then went grocery shopping, and then spent most of the day reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo--it's awesome and I need to read the other two now. I also made homemade pizza for dinner. I do have pictures of the pizza because I was really proud of it--I cooked it without an oven! Talk about pan pizza. But I don't have them with me right now so I'll post them later if I remember...

Monday I used the gym AND the pool (I got sunburned again, despite my best efforts) and then spent the afternoon/evening with my friend Jocelyn who just got back from Korea. We were able to see the National Day fireworks from the condo (27th floor) so that was pretty sweet. Needless to say, it was with a heavy heart that I returned to work and my own place on Tuesday!