Thanksgiving in Singapore

Dear Readers,



There is no Thanksgiving in Singapore. what do you think this is, America? The American Association offers a picnic at a hot and mosquito ridden park with all the beer you can drink. I just said no. Been there and I have the bites to prove it. No, this year I opted for the set meal at Dan Ryan's Chicago Grill that includes turkey, mashed taters, stuffing, and cranberry something, plus pumkin pie. Sure I could have cooked all that myself but when in Singapore, it's cheaper to eat out. A turkey runs you forty dollars here. Besides, I won't have to do the dishes.



It rains here almost every day now but just short showers. The plants here are wilting. The heat is intense. All the while the Christmas lights are up and "Let in Snow" plays in the mall. Tammy and I have been keeping score on the most cheesy decorations and the mall that won had a bunny, Alice in Wonderland girl, fairies, mushrooms, and butterflies. They really don't get Christmas here. They should develop their own traditions with an Asian slant. Maybe something with palm trees, lizards, sheets of white rain, and durian pudding (stinky fruit). Santa Claus could be a Asian grandpa giving out rice porridge. No where do any of these present decoration portray the birth of Christ. That would be against the law.



Speaking of different religions, I went with the American Association to see the famed tooth of Buddha. Yes, did you know they cut his body up into 18,000 parts and distributed them around the world to do miraclous things. This temple was six floors. On top they had a garden that grew the Buddha Tooth orchid developed for the temple. Very nice. They also had a prayer wheel that was about eight tall. you pushed it clockwise around once and it was to send a sutra chant to heaven. The fourth floor was where the tooth was. You had to take off your shoes to go there. The tooth is enclosed in a stupa of 413 poiunds of gold (people donated their old jewerly for a melt down). True, it didn't really look like a tooth. Could have been anything really but it's the symbol of the tooth that counts. People come here to be cured by the tooth. I had a rash. It went away. I guess it worked! ha!

Anyway, a buddhist monk sat there to bless people for a fee if they wanted. They would be allowed to actually pray in front of the tooth.



The third floor was a museum that recounted the life of Buddha and how the temple came to be. It is a new temple, only two years old. It came about through a vision of a monk from Cambodia who was in charge of the tooth. He was getting old and met this really intelligent monk who he instructed to build a temple in Singapore. The guy had to go to go to the prime minister and get some land and then build the temple for billions of dollars. It's a modern temple with an elevator and bathrooms and even a kitchen to feed the poor. But it's made to look old and beautiful. Gold is everywhere. It is dedicated to the future buddha. They are waiting for him to come. I was struck by how Buddha's mother was supposedly childless and a white elephant visited her dreams. Then she was pregnant. We compared that to Mary, mother of Jesus. They predict the next Buddha will arrive during a time of extreme chaos (end times). There is nothing more interesting than hearing these monks chanting in the nice golden room with a microphone watched by the 10,000 buddhas on the walls. It will raise the hair on the back of your neck. Everyone is reading the Chinese sutra and repeating OM OM with them. Except that old man on the last row. He's sound asleep.



Did you know that once a monk has risen to a most high level and dies, his ashes turn to crystal? Each of those 10,000 Buddhas has a monk's crystals in its head. Creepy. Then there is the display of Buddha's tongue, intestine, brain all in crystal form in the museum. They love this stuff. Some of the group was Buddhist but they rest were shaking their head and saying it was a bunch of crap. Maybe so. But I found the similarity of Christ's coming and the future Buddha really interesting. And you already knew that the end times for Islam have Jesus leading their army against the Christians. Is everyone right?



I have been going to Pompeii lectures down at the National Museum. They are so boring that the Italian lecturers have had to stop and wake people up before they fell out of their chairs. I thought for sure I was going to get creamed by a fat lady beside me. When they start weaving, you get worried.



We caught the annual Christmas Light Up on Saturday. They turned the lights on at 7:45 this year. The President threw the switch himself. President? I asked. There's a president? Yes named Nathan. What does he do? Christmas Light Up evidently.



That's all from here. Steve is going back to China for ten days and I want to finish Christmas shopping. May the Buddha be with you-or his parts anyway! See ya.

Drama in Singapore

Dear Readers,

Last week was filled with frustration and agony. I came down with a sore throat on Monday night and it went downhill from there. I was suppose to be at a book club but couldn't finish the book because I broke my Kindle. It didn't matter because I was called to the travel agency to finish paying for my upcoming trip to New Zealand. I hoofed it to the other side of island only to have my credit card shut down (I already called several weeks ago to make sure this didn't happen). There I was, embarassed, and unable to reach the company on the phone. So I hoofed it back to the apartment, only I got on the wrong train in my furstration and headed in another direction. By the time I got back to the apartment, I'd missed the book club. So I called the credit card people and hoofed it back over to the travel agency, having paid up.

There seemed to be some good news. The insurance company had investigated where our $6000 went and it had been found at the Raffles Hospital. Great I thought. I gave them a call. They had no idea what I was talking about. This was the fourth time I had called them to ask if they had received the overpayment. No, No. No. I was beyond upset. They said they would call me back. Never heard from them. More important, I missed going out to the pool waiting for their call.

Now, I went to my new writers club down at the American Club. They meet 10:30-1. Why so long? We all had an assignment and each of us reads our writing. The assignment was to start a page with "My mother never . . .," and make it up. After the first draft, you take your mother out of it and then yourself. I ended up with a woman named Carrie who is executed on death row because she murdered her boss who had taken out a hit on her. She was laundering money for a casino. Anyway, when I got finished reading my work, everyone was speechless. They are nonfiction writers, reporters for CNN, etc. They need help writing fiction and they hope I can help. I live in an imaginary world, I told them, where hospitals call you back and your credit card is not declined.

The real world sucks. Is any of that stuff true about your mother, they asked. Only in my head, ha!

So I look forward to reading some of my chapters of my new novel to them.

On Friday I took a taxi and went down to the hospital. I marched up to the office with my copy of the email from the insurance company and the number of the wireless transaction. Ah, they declared, they had found my money over night. It's in the mail. So far I haven't seen it in the mail. Looks like another road trip.

This weekend Steve and I went to a farmer's market that had been advertised. It turned out to be some westerners making alittle money on the side importing organic vegetables from Malaysia or bored housewives making ice cream. We were out in the middle of no where and I was afraid we would have a long way to walk home with my bottle of organic rose wine. But it must have been karma. We walked out to the road and a taxi just drove up! That night we went to Raffles Hotel and had a Singapore Sling. I hadn't done that yet. After getting liquored up, we rode over to Little India to see the lights for the Hindu festival Deepavali (Festival of Lights). Cheesey Christmas lights on the main streets have been banned by the Prime Minister. But they abound there! It celebrates the triumph of good over evil. Everyone gets the day off. On Sunday we went to see Adele and the rising mummy adventure. In French because I picked the wrong cinema. Only one had French with English subtitles and that's the one I picked. It was a scream, French or not. I recommend it when you're in a silly mood (or liquored up).

Tammy and I went to charity Christmas fair at the Goodwood historical hotel. It was cool until I saw the dragon ornament I bought at Tanglin fifteen dollars higher then I paid for it. That's when I realized we weren't getting any deals here. It was the big shake down. I did buy Christmas cards with the three wisemen riding Thai elephants.

Well, that's all from here. Say happy birthday to Sarah. She's an old lady now. Ha! What does that make me? Ancient. My mother? Old as dirt. My grandmother? She knew George Washington personally. See ya.

You call that fashion?

Dear Readers,

We would have had a great weekend except for the noise upstairs. Some people have moved in above us and they are a herd of moose. Starting from 4:30 when the kids arrive home, there's a NASCAR race upstairs until about 1 am. I can't go to bed until they do and so I have asked to be moved. This is drastic. We love our apartment and the view over the pool. Why don't they move them? They aren't complaining. This is a battle until the end-I will call every night starting at ten. Last night our pleas ended at 12:30.

I went to the fashion show sponsored by the American Association of Women down at Tanglin Mall. I've never seen so many Texans in all my life. Everyone there was a wife of an oil engineer here building platforms and running the businesses. Like most Americans, we were not Asian size. We were eating all the donuts too! It's what we do! We were all complaining how there were no clothes here our size and how shopping is a drag.

Then the designer for the store we were in call out with a girl's necklace around HIS neck. He wanted to tell us what to wear in Singapore-all black and white, balloon dresses, and the worst material I have ever saw. I couldn't believe the price for $10 worth of wrinkled crap. Did I buy something? Sure. I wanted to be part of the herd. I was eating the donuts. I bought a rust Tank top. It made me look busty! These women went for the clothes though. I couldn't believe the cash I saw coming out of their oil wallets. I was given a grab bag, some barbed wire earrings, and sent on my way like the trailer trash I am.

That night I rode over to the National Museum with Tammy and her husband to catch the Pompeii lecture on the people of Pompeii. I was interested in serious intellectual study but everyone was there for the talk on prostitutes. Yes, Pompeii was a red light district before it's demise in 79 AD. I remember it well. The British scholar was great and the slides very good. I told Temmy that I wished I remembered more of my Latin! Maybe I should take it up again. She said no one takes Latin for fun. What kind of a weirdo was I? Trailer trash? This weekend Steve and I went to the museum exhibit for the first time. I have to say I was amazed at all the relics they had and the collection of plaster bodies. The best thing was the 3D movie made by the Melbourne University. I had these large glasses on and volcanic ash was pouring over me and I was swatting at fire sparks in the air. I was really there! When we were half way through the tour when all of a sudden these people rush in Roman costumes, yelling and fleeing from the volcano. You see, we didn't take the interactive tour with the actors! We heard it anyway! I couldn't help but think about those people in Indonesia who refused to leave their houses when the volcano went last week. They were found in the same positions as the Romans in 79 AD. See, the Romans didn't have clue to what was happening. But the Indonesians? It was on the front page of the paper.

Christmas trees are going up everywhere downtown. I have to admit I've never the seen the newest thing here-an umbrella turned upside down that circulates false snow up and down over Santa. I was impressed with the lengths that people go to to sell Christmas. Connecting Christmas to umbrellas now is a stretch.

Tammy and I went to see a Chinese art gallery. The paintings there went from realistic to contemporary and abstract. It was fun to see the range of colors and techniques. Most important of all, I got a list of all the art galleries on the island. So I want to visit every one

I included the rest of the Malaysian pictures. Have a look. Bye.