I'm a web editor from Singapore living in Tokyo. I'm building websites for a living as a writer on the go. I worked in print media for six years until I moved countries and used the Internet as a way to have a viable, mobile career. The Internet is a fascinating space and I never thought I would ever morph into a web chick - but here I am.
...The ups and downs of expat life, trailing partner issues, food, travel, and Japanese culture. It's a way to keep in touch with friends back home and all over the world, plus it's a corner for me to showcase my work. But really, I'm just a restless spirit looking for great adventures and fabulous food.
As the world is spinning around me with Obama making his mark on America and Singapore receiving its first-ever Olympic medal in 48 years, my only concern was to watch Sex and The City on my SQ flight from Tokyo to Singapore.
My brains feel a little like jelly and I am not fully recovered — still coughing away but am happy to be back. I’m slowly catching up with work and feel buoyed by increasing numbers, in terms of traffic and advertising revenue.
Enough about that, I would like to blog about a pretty special day spent with my mother and sisters in our day trip to Johor Bahru. My father played golf on Vesak Day, so he couldn’t join us.
It’s one of those new traditions in my family whenever I come back to visit — we would shop till we drop in City Square shopping mall, just north of the causeway.
Working by remote takes far more discipline than I expected. My Sydney trip was slightly easier because I worked from the office there.
One glich, though: Our hotel only had one LAN cable outlet so the kangaroo had priority because he had more pressing, time-sensitive matters to deal with.
What did I do? I just hung around and read my book. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to work but I needed to be online to get any progress.
Just a quick pictorial spread of the fun day we had with George and Jo who got hitched on a beautiful sunny day in Sydney. They have come together on a path that could tear apart most couples but they stuck together through it all.
A short rehash of their history: George dumped his ex Pip two days after she arrived in Singapore — this followed meeting Jo in Brisbane at a company conference. Jo was married, had a baby girl, lived in Brisbane, and was his colleague (some of his friends tease him that she’s older, so that’s supposedly another hurdle, but really, they are only 18 months apart). They kept up Skyping everyday for three hours and probably saw each other once a month for the two years that George was in Singapore. It was only last November that George returned to Sydney and she moved up from Brissy.
Along George Street in central Sydney was the Anzac Day parade on Friday, 25 April 2008. I was always fuzzy on the details on why this was such an important date in the Aussie calendar.
In Singapore, I woke up at dawn to go to a Woodlands cemetery to attend an Anzac ceremony three years ago. I just knew that many soldiers, Aussies, Kiwis, and British were slaughtered by the Turkish troops in Gallipoli, a beach on the coast of Turkey, during World War I. The battle instructions sent out gave the wrong location so the troops arrived at a cliffed beach where the Turkish army shot downwards and everyone was hopelessly wiped out within a matter of hours as the sun rose. After a series of hymns and prayers, we went down to the breakfast buffet where coffee and rum were served. So Aussie — they have their tipple any of the day.
What makes a place feel more and more like home is when you get to know the peeps. Sydney has always been a familiar destination, what with the kangaroo’s family and friends. But more recently, I’ve forged my own friendships in the land Down Under, and it’s been nice catching up with them in person, rather than on MSN Messenger.
So I got to know Jean through the kangaroo from his time in Melbourne, but in the last few years, we were invited to her wedding in Oz, met up for drinkies in Singapore and munched on yakitori in Tokyo.
I’m attending the kangaroo’s little brother’s wedding this weekend so we are hanging out here for 10 days. We have a string of family gatherings and meetups with friends.
Last night was the meet-the-in-laws bbq at Epping, where his brother and fiancé live. It’s a very suburban area and looks like Perth — wide open spaces with big residential houses stretched out along a seemingly endless road…
We had fun seeing some of the family while tucking into some good ol’ Aussie barbecued steak and chicken.
Today at lunch with the colleagues I learned these Aussisms: “cracking the shits” and “farting sparks” — they both mean to be very angry. Hilarious.
Anyway, this could be my last post till Monday because I won’t have Internet access. Have a good weekend, everyone!
Since I lost all my photos in the big iBook crash, I couldn’t blog about certain events. But a few days ago, a friend emailed me her photo album on Picasa, so here I am, sharing pretty pictures of my last snowboarding trip of the winter season.
A gal pal invited me to her company’s ski trip in late March. They got a massive discount on accommodation and free lessons thrown in, so I couldn’t resist. Her group of colleagues was fun and easy going. Everything was well organised and all we did was tear down the slopes, eat, drink, played silly games and dipped into the onsen twice a day. ‘Twas bliss…
Meanwhile, the kangaroo was back in Tokyo lugging our things from the old apartment to the new. My friends teased me for abusing my boyfriend, but really, our lives are so spontaneous schedule-wise, that stuff like this happens sometimes. His business trips are unpredictable and I make plans regardless whether he would be in town or not. As an aside, this is one way I survive as a trailing partner. If I waited for the kangaroo to tell me when he would be passing through town, I wouldn’t make any friends nor go on many outings. My advice is: make plans as if you were a single gal. If he can fit into your plans, cool, if not, you can hang out as a couple another time.
Back to my awesome trip…
We stayed at New Greenpia Tsunan Ski Resort in Niigata, which was about an hour away on the shinkansen, plus an additional hour’s bus ride from the station. It’s a big family hotel, but for the reasonable fee, who cares?
I love snowboarding but I am not good at it. This is me struggling to get up to pose for a photo but I couldn’t stand upright on this down slope.
The view was amazing. It makes all the tumbling and aching muscles worth it.
On breaks, I would just sit on the snow in the sun and gaze at the mountains and trees.
One new thing about Japanese culture I learned is they are absolutely into taking lessons. The Japanese believe in structured classes where they will practice till they get it right. Since this was a company trip, we had to participate because attendance was taken. It was particularly challenging for me as the lessons were all in Japanese.
If you’ve got time to kill, stop by the sake museum at Yuzawa station. For a small fee (probably less than 1,000JPY), you can try five different cups of sake. How it works is they have a huge selection of sake along a wall where the rice wine is dispensed into your tiny cup. I tried anything where I could recognize the kanji — from dragons to flowers to red monkeys, I sipped my way to a giggly, tipsy state.
I’m quite a loner most times, and if I do travel, it’s always with the kangaroo, so this group experience was refreshing. Anyway I hope the pictures will encourage you to try out Japanese ski slopes — they are just breathtaking.
Since we had such a strenuous cycle the day before, we decided to chill out in Gorkha for one day. The kangaroo was the first among us to suffer an attack of food poisoning — the culprit was a plate of chicken bryani which he refused to have again from herein.
We crept out of bed rather late by Nepalese standards: 9am. This merchant town has only one tourist attraction which is a temple on top of a hill where the Monkey God resides. We thought we’d pay him a visit.
Cute little goats pranced around us as we hiked up.
That was our first glimpse of the Annapurna Himalayas (which means mountains with snow) — they would be a constant backdrop for our long journey towards Pokhara.
The kangaroo was truly relaxed without his laptop and became philosophical when he stood next to the Monkey God. He toyed with the idea of playing chess all day whilst guarding the deity. He suggested I haul firewood by way of strapping the sticks to my head to take care of our household.
The hike proved a little draining for the sick kangaroo so he retired to our room while Ben and I wandered around taking pictures in the dusk light.
Lookie what we have here: a sarong kebaya — the unofficial national costume of Singapore which all the Singapore Airlines flight attendants wear. What was it doing here?
These ladies looked a little serious but they were really friendly and excited to see us. We figured the Nepalese thought that taking a photo is an important affair so they shouldn’t goof around. Another conclusion is they don’t have mirrors (just going by our humble hostel dwellings) and it was a way to see their reflections.
This little guy totally hammed it up for Ben’s hefty camera. He readjusted his collar and rearranged his hair. Everytime he posed, his female companions would shriek with laughter. This is an example of why travelling is so wonderful — you meet the locals and communicate even though you don’t speak the same language but you have a laugh anyway.
