Happy Chinese New Year!!!!

Finally I am in bed after a nice soothing shower while Linda looks at the video she took of Chinese New Year out in the street in front of her parents' house in Kuching. Saying it's all quite remarkable is such an understatement.

After a delicious breakfast of roti canei with ah pa, Linda, and her brother, I spent most of the day riding around Kuching. There was shopping (I snagged 3 sweet branded polo shirts for about 30 bucks), and there was a surprising trip to MacDonalds for a "Prosperity Burger." This... item... is apparently offered only at this time of year and is allegedly popular among the citizens of this charming city. Perhaps you have guessed that I do not quite understand why. It's not that the little sandwich is horrible. It's just quite unremarkable and somehow being sold in a place that has some of the most remarkable food I have ever tasted. Ah well. I'm grateful little brother wanted to provide me the experience. Not he, all of his friends, AND the whole Malaysian army could get me to eat another burger of prosperity so long as there is one food hawker still operating in Kuching. Just sayin'.

I grabbed a wonderful nap around mid afternoon and dreamt of the rain forest. Being here makes me really hear The Green calling out to me. I slept only a little while, but I felt so rejuvenated. It wasn't long before I was back in the car going somewhere. I've gotten used to this routine now. Someone will say it's time to go and off I go. I just sit there and enjoy the conversation and take in the view as we whiz around in between, and everything but over the top of and underneath the heavy traffic that seems to be typical here. One of my favorite things to watch is how the motorcycles and scooters sort of bubble up to the front of the queue at every intersection. They bob and weave freely between the cars once the traffic flow ceases for any reason until they themselves strike that invisible barrier formed of 1 part law and 1 part interest in survival. Once traffic resumes, off they go like carefree gnats. Another neat thing is how many of these are carrying more than two people, often one of them being an infant or child. Whatever floats your boat, folks. Not what I would call the ultimate form of safety though.

We went to see ah ma and ah kong too this evening. That stands for grandma and grandpa. I adore them and enjoy all of the stories and non-verbals that will always define them in my memory. And of course we had to eat another meal there. We had just eaten at Linda's folks' place as a family, so this one was kind of challenging. It was a good warm up for what we'll be doing in the morning though. Visit and eat and repeat. At least the food and company are great. I expect to survive it all just fine, but not without a little bit of discomfort. I'll take it as a challenge.

Around 2345 the serious fireworks started to get going. By midnight it felt like I was standing in the middle of an artillery test range. I have never seen such serious pyrotechnics being fired off by private citizens on such a wide scale. All up and down the street and in the surrounding neighborhoods... Big flashes and big thunder. Linda is a fireworks addict who rarely gets her fix, so I loved being with her as she thrilled to every blast. A couple of sectors of the neighborhood almost seemed to be in competition the way they seemed to take turns firing off the biggest salvos in our immediate area. The last major exchange didn't happen until almost 0100. Well done, people-who-will-spare-no-expense-to-show-everyone-that-no-expense-was-spared! I was grateful that the same intermittent rains that had been making the temperatures so bearable lately also minimized chances of secondary fires.

Tomorrow promises to be a day filled with visits and custom. There will be at least one "Lion Dance" that I will attend also. Being here is proof that being a stranger in a strange land can be one of the most delightful experiences a guy can have.

But you can keep your "Prosperity Burger" guys, sorry.

Busy Monday

Finally we made it to one of those huge food courts that offers a dazzling array of tasty delights, some of which one can identify at a distance and others that beg for translation services from Linda or our hosts. In the end I wound up enjoying (in order of tastiness) carrot cake (it's savory, not sweet and not at all breadlike), lor mee, roast pork, cuikueh (nice rice cakes with yucky raddish stuff on top of it), and oyster omelette.

We had a very busy Monday here. I missed out on whatever my wife and our cool friends did though. I was instead harassing people at one of the local universities trying to build a better idea of how I might find work in this fabulous place. I get the impression that people who work as professors at universities in Singapore are having a very good time. I've heard that things tend to work in a pretty top-down manner for people working here, university professors included, but I'm not sure the authoritarian environment isn't buying them something priceless. The 4 faculty I talked to represent multiple groups and roles, yet each of them sent off a really energetic and sociable vibe.

I was supposed to drink up some breathtakingly smooth Macallan whiskey, but instead I wound up so tired I just crashed. Once again I proved that Keith is just a tired old donkey at the end of the day *sigh* One of these days I will give everyone a heart attack by staying up and having fun!

Walking around Singapore's Chinatown

What an extravaganza! We were told that Sunday night was kind of slow for that area at this time of year, but it was sure packed enough for my liking. I think the highlight of this place with its people brushing past each other in loose formations signaling various levels of false detachment or eagerness to find the next deal was the weird guys with microphones hawking their late night TV commercial type goods.

One guy had a very light weight puppet toy he made jump and do tricks by MAGIC using a wire that was not visible from the distance all onlookers were forced to maintain. He had the wire wrapped around his body and some objects we were supposed to consider randomly placed, and he was telling the ball of fluff to do one trick after another which it promptly performed as obediently as a thumb on a partially concealed hand may obey a showman's brain.

Other goodies on sale were fake hairpieces (that guy had massive attendance which blew my mind since I think the hair women have here is so lovely on average without this junk), sidewalk charcoal art (looked awesome), and those funny looking scalp massage things that look like thin wire claws. I realize those claws actually feel good, although I am not sure they provide all of the health benefits the hawkers claim they do. Still, all of the people gathered around to have this thing mashed on top of their heads seemed pretty funny.

We walked all over the place I wound up getting a very tiny taste of durian ice cacang. No thank you. No really, you can have the rest. Forever.

It was a long and tiring day but full of fun. Earlier we had gorged ourselves on dim sum, and then re-gorged ourselves at a relatives house where it was the little kiddos that made my day more than the self-forced feeding. I had curry crab. Very yummy sauce I would eat on anything if I could. Crab, I love the flavor but I am inept at getting at the meat. I was so pathetic that our host even started cracking the shells for me. I would have been embarrassed if it didn't feel so downright sweet and nurturing. Linda tricked me into eating crab roe. She was supposed to be giving me crab meat. I am going to have to get better at this shell thing. It's all good though. One of our host's daughters tricked me into eating CHOCOLATE.

Ha Ha We Missed the Snow

We can't resist having a nice hard chuckle for the way we got out of town just before super snow hit Pittsburgh. Of course the flip side is that now we are in a very hot humid place we are not used to. I am about to go meet a former classmate from early days at Carnegie Mellon and wondering if I will be as damp as a wash cloth by the time I get picked up to go to DIM SUM.

Yeah. DIM SUM. Can you guess what the post AFTER this one will be like? Something involving Yum to the 97th power or so I bet...

Any of you in Pittsburgh, you really do have our sympathy. Call in to work, make a hot cup of cocoa, and follow this blog. Oh, it won't help you at all stay warm probably. But at least you'll be able to get back to sleep and have dreams of warmer climes and warmer times. That's pretty much real life for us at the moment. Aaaaaaah

K

Damien and Linda's Self-Promotion to First Class

So our flight from Seoul to Singapore was pretty empty. I am not sure why more people were not trying to leave Seoul to get to Singapore since it is one of my favorite places on Earth, but maybe all of the tasteful travelers had already left. In any case, we sat there and looked around and Linda Hunter, true to form starts talking about how we could go over to the middle of the plane and commandeer 10 seats to lie out upon and otherwise rule over like big shots.

After my usual indecision about things like this and sneaking into different movie theaters etc, I said why not let's go take over. After all, you only live once, and being slain by one of these pencil thin automatons pulled from the cover of a glamor magazine once they discovered we had violated the cardinal rule of staying in one's assigned seat seemed at least slightly less than likely.

Of course no one cared, and we probably looked more dangerous insisting upon huddling in our original seats on the side of the plan than we looked stretching out in the middle. Linda was so pleased with herself and kept talking about pulling this coup on other flights. I was there enjoying my wife's glow of conquest while trying to think of a way to get all of the grading done that I brought "to do on the plane." Yeah right. I was thinking about how cool it would be if I could as one of the fabulous animated mannequins strolling smartly up the aisle to access their computer chips for information on organizational management so that they could do me a real solid and grade all of the papers while I sipped another Hite and took a nap when Damian struck.

Yes, Damien is alive and well with the rumors of his defeat in "Omen 3: The Final Conflict" greatly exaggerated. He is back, he is a kid again, and he flies on airplanes. Damien has very powerful legs. He enjoys extending them with great force just as you relax or get your thoughts together. In between explosions of activity, he lets out his soul rending Hell Screech while his kicking powers regenerate. At first I thought he wasn't anything more than just another kid with parents who just couldn't solve the puzzle of airline discipline. I did not realize what forces I was dealing with until I noticed he had surprisingly quieted down. Slowly I turned my head back around the side of my aisle seat to have a look at what I expected to be a sleeping kid who had finally used up his juice.

Instead, there he was, standing up, arms hanging straight at his sides, eyes as black as the very heart of darkness staring straight at me some two feet away. As slowly as I had turned to discover my peril, I turned my eyes back ahead of me and hoped that as I had gazed into the malevolent abyss of those lifeless orbs, the abyss had not gazed into me.

Damien flies coach. Who'd have figured.

No wonder so many delicious horror movies from this part of the world feature children. I have often laughed at the notion that perhaps children were the scariest thing imaginable for some reason in Asia. Now I need wonder no longer. Damien has been here for who knows how long, tormenting weary travelers, staring them down and daring them to act, silently scowling at them when they don't. He kept at it for pretty much the entire flight, making it kind of hard for Linda to continue gloating about having it better than First Class. True, each of them was stuck with fewer seats than we were. But geez, at least The Beast Child is unable to cross the boundary beyond which only they (and glamorous automatons) may pass.

Korean Beer

The first time I asked for a FREE beer on Korean Airlines, I was promptly handed a Heineken. Not my favorite, but hey a pretty decent beer and it was free too. I was pleased.

But after walking around Seoul with our wonderful, charming hosts Chang Joung and Seon Bin, I had come to learn that there was a popular beer real Koreans drink and it is called Cass. So, naturally, when we boarded our flight to Singapore, I made it a priority to request a Cass, and it was handed to me right away. If I had a lawn in Seoul and had to mow it on a very hot day, a Cass would do just fine. Refreshing and cool without much fuss about flavor and such. I bet it is a lot cheaper than Heineken and the perfect flight attendants were probably laughing at me behind their perfect little curtain. But wait... There turned out to be another Korean beer on board: Hite (pronounced hi teh). Yes, of course I had to try it. I thought it tasted a little better and enjoyed it's higher carbonation. This is a beer that would do just fine if I had a lawn in Seoul to mow and it was only a slightly hot day! It's THAT good!

Hmm. I want a Hite right now and it is only 0845 local time. This nasty tea Linda brought down for me earlier will have to do. It's cooling and will prevent my bursting into HEATY flames I am told. *glugglugglug*

Hello Seoul!

After a million hours of air flight we have finally landed in Seoul and I am sitting here at 5 in the morning or so in an airport that is probably only this empty at this time of day. Linda and I headed right away for the awesome shower facility they have here only to find out that it does not open until 7am. Looks like we may be checking that little item out AFTER our whirlwind tour of a small part of the city with a friend of a friend.


There is nothing I can say about Korean Airlines except that the food, service, and facilities are absolutely fantastic. Flying US airlines is simply an insult. Too bad I am not so well off that I can insist upon boycotting them until they get their act together (if they will ever even bother to). Linda and I alternated between snoozing and watching movies and harrassing each other most of the time. I saw "Surrogates" (terrible movie that had potential) and fell asleep trying to watch 3 or 4 other shows. We had some babies on our flight who didn't quite get into the experience. Poor little ones tried to explain what was wrong, but nobody ever figured it out. I wonder if they heard the crying as they sat in the watch tower bringing us in for landing....


OK this is all I've got for right now. People want to use this fine, free Internet station. And once Linda returns from freshening up I had better follow suit. It just wouldn't do for my wife to be cleaner than I am!!

Keith