confusionLast weekend (actually Thursday evening through Tuesday morning) Candice and I went to Beijing. It was a quick trip, literally only 96 hours from the time we landed in Beijing to the time we took off again. But in that time we did a lot, Forbidden City, Summer Palace, Great Wall, Hutongs, etc. More info coming when I get the pictures cleaned up—all 7 gigabytes of them!
A year ago today—September 1, 2004 I made my way down to National Airport outside DC and spent the next 24 hours alternately sitting in airport terminals and sitting on airplanes.
When it was all done—just after midnight on the morning of September second, arrived in Singapore and I made my way out of the airport, into a cab and down the East Cost Parkway to the Gallery Hotel.
That was the beginning of my time here in Singapore and except for two months back in the US—in October last year and again in June this year—I have lived in Singapore rather then just visited. I spent some time working to get assigned over seas for work. It would have been hard to get here without work. And while Singapore would not have been my first choice of places to go I am having fun. So here’s to living another year of fun in a foreign land. I hope the coming days are as good as those past.
I’ve been using this as my desktop wall paper for a while. I like the contrast of the orange on the black and white. And the split into three panels gives it a little bit more interest (Besides the original image—from the Auyathya [confusion.cc] photo set was not the right aspect ratio to make a desktop image. Anyway, after several months I decided to stop slacking and put the wallpaper up here. After all; that’s what the ‘goodies’ section is all about.
I went over to Pulau Ubin for a few hours and wondered around. It’s the second time I’ve been there and it’s really not much. It’s got two beaches but they are very small and the sand is, or at least was, very rocky and filled with broken shells. There were only a few people using the beaches, most of them for fishing. One group of teens was camped out and had buried themselves in gray mud when I was at Noorden Beach.
I wanted to head to Chek Jawa and wonder around the mud flats at low tide looking for creepy-crawly things to take Macro shots of. Alas, it was raining and I did not want to make the hour and a half walk in the rain (most of the roads to Chek Jawa are dirt.) So I stuck mostly to the paved roads and wondered to the two beaches.
On my previous trip I went (with Candice that time) to the Buddhist temple, so that means I’ve now done three of the four main attractions according to the tourist info: Noorden Beach, Mamam Beach, Chek Jawa and Wat Siam, or the Thai Buddhist Temple). Next time I will have to wait for better weather and do Chek Jawa.
I didn’t get to see much nature because of the constant light drizzle (and a short downpour.) So the birds and such stayed out of camera sight. I did see a rather large monitor lizard, crossing the road. I didn’t get a chance to ask him why he crossed the road—I didn’t even get a chance to take a photo of him because by the time my camera was powered up he was long gone.
Candice and I spent a few days in New York City. Ellis Island, Statue of Liberty, Flugie, Bagels, 5th Avenue… :)
