Picture Time

Having guests in town has provided a great opportunity to check out some of the cool touristy places in town. I have been better about taking my camera with me to capture the sights of Singapore. Here are some of the recent pictures from explorations of Chinatown:

The streets of Chinatown. 

Doing some shopping. 

S. enjoying an authentic chinese pork bao purchased on the street. 

Love the lanterns. 

Love this one- the old and the new. Such a crazy city we live in. 

Can never take too many pictures of the Indian temple. I had never noticed the elephant in the gate before!

Flowers hanging from the ceiling. 

Picture from the ceiling of the temple.... 

These flowers were so pretty- and smelled so good!

NIKE 10K

After lots of hours training on the treadmill, my first Singapore race was today! And despite the aforementioned haze problem, it was SO much fun!

Getting ready for the dress- yup, it's dark outside because its 6am. 

To try to beat the heat a little bit, they start the races as early as possible. The Singapore marathon flag off time is 5am! 

Excited. Nervous. Tired. No make-up. Thanks Dave. 

My very supportive and very sleep husband and personal cheering section. 

Can you see me? 

Here I am!

It's like where's Waldo- except we are all wearing blinding neon shirts, 

Getting pumped up at the starting line

Hello there. 

I love that in these big races (there were 12,000 people running) they get you in the starting line pen, then leave you stranded and smushed in there for 20 minutes before you get to run! I was warmed up before I had to stand packed like a sardine with a few hundred of my new best friends. 

Finally, we're off! 

The finish line. Crazy to think the first people crossed at a little over 30 minutes (as I was happily crossing the 5k mark!) 

I MADE IT! Action shot as I got to the finish line. 

Yay! 

I was a little bit disappointed that the finishers medal was in fact a plastic cartoon toy instead of a medal, but I'll take it. 

Milling around the float after the race. The tee shirts are more blinding in the light of day. 

Well, I certainly didn't win the race. But I did win my own personal medal for finishing with a smile on my face and having a great time. I was really worried that I hadn't trained enough because despite my best efforts, company and work got the best of my work outs for a few weeks, but while I certainly could have been better prepared, it went just fine. I will not be winning any awards for speed in this life time, but I am pretty happy with my trotting pace- it gets the job done. The worst problem the whole race was my little fat fingers getting swollen and throbbing and having to look like a fool running with my hands over head to get the blood circulating. 

The race was generally pretty relaxed and people were just out to have a good time. My goal in every race is "don't come in last" and I was pretty confident I was going to achieve my goal when there were people stopping to walk after the first kilometer. The first portapotty stop was before the 2k mark, and there were people lined up 10 deep! Seriously, people- we just started! I did see multiple women running in burqas, with their neon yellow Nike shirts over their full length robes. That impressed me a lot- it was HOT out there, so I cannot imagine how hot it is in a headscarf and full sleeves and a dress. There was some occasional pushing and shoving when the path got narrow, and the water stop set up basically required that you slow down and walk through the station to get your mini-cup of water, but all together- it was a great race. There was music along the way, people were in good spirits and there is just something special about running with thousands of other people- all of our heads bobbing in a sea of neon yellow. 

Next weekend is my second 10K- an all women's race- and hopefully it will go just as well! At this point the half marathon in December seems a little bit aggressive, but I am going to do my best to train up for it- and we will see how it goes! 

Hazy Days are Here Again

There is not a lot going on in the news in Singapore. With out politics and sports to discuss, the pickings are often a bit slim. But we do have some "national" news these days.

Remember how we used to have a view of the ocean and Indonesia in the distance? 

Not so much anymore. 

Grey haze is everywhere! 

Apparently the haze is caused by fires burning in Sumatra and the smoke is floating its way on over to Singapore. This happens every year, to varying degrees. There are measurement standards, and when it gets really bad, they issue health alerts and suggest people stay inside. So while I was praying for snow days as a child, children across Singapore and Malaysia are praying for haze days. 

Its gross- I'll give you that. But it is ALL people are talking about here. It is almost like people are so deprived for something noteworthy to discuss they are hopping on the haze-train and focusing all their attention to this new environmental issue. 

The blame is all going to Indonesia- but I think Singapore should probably take a look around its country and take note of the 100000 construction cranes and dirty construction sites and wonder if maybe, just maybe, some of the blame our our declining air quality is coming from internal sources. Exhibit A is below. We used to have a lovely grassy park behind our condos, now we have a massive dirt producing hole in the ground. 

Oh and did I mention that they do construction from 7am to 10pm, 7 days a week? Or at least, that is the official stance, they really do construction basically 24-hours a day because they would rather get fines for working in restricted hours than lose money getting behind schedule on the build. Oh yea, and this madness and noise is conveniently located right next to our pool. So long relaxing days at the pool!  Now do you think  all the dirt in the air is really from Indonesia? Questionable....

Fall in Singapore

As per usual, it has been weeks since my last post. Unfortunately life has been pretty busy and in our limited free time- doing exciting things like laundry, grocery shopping and sleeping usually take precedence over keeping up with my blog. Bummer.

It is a little strange to think of it as fall here. It doesn't look or feel like fall- yet it is late October and nearly Halloween- despite it still being 100000 degrees here everyday. We have realized though that 7 months in this weather has changed our perception of heat. We still complain about it occasionally (like the above) but for the most part- we just forget that its not normal to be as sweaty as we are on a daily basis. It is only when we have visitors and they are literally melting that we really remember that it is SO ungodly hot here. One benefit I can see from this heat is that the little American children who will be trick-or-treating next week will not have the misfortune of having to cover their adorable costumes with heavy winter coats- which was par for the course in a Colorado childhood.

Speaking of Halloween- we were SO thrilled to find a pumpkin at our new favourite grocer!

Its funny- they sell pumpkin soup everywhere here- but I have never seen a real pumpkin! We were so excited to have a little piece of Halloween cheer in the house that we overlooked this:

That's right- we paid 24 dollars for a smallish pumpkin. 

It's the heat- it makes you do crazy things. 

This weekend we got in to the fall spirit and went about carving our pumpkin. I know some people make fancy and elaborate carvings, but we are inept with knives traditionalists. 

Step one: make a geometrically difficult lid so that it is nearly impossible to close the pumpkin

Fun with pumpkin guts. I don't know where this pumpkin came from, but man it had some weird looking innards. 

Expert pumpkin carving skills. Don't mind the all blue outfit. It was apparently smurf day in our house. 

Work. In. Progress. 

More carving technique. 

Luckily I did not lose any fingers in this process. 

Woot Woot- fabulous pumpkin!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!