Mac and I started a book club a couple of weeks ago, and we've just finished reading our first selection. The blog for our club is found at:

http://davinebookclub.blogspot.com

All are invited to comment on our selections and share their experiences with the works we choose to read.

http://picasaweb.google.com/boisvert/2007SeptemberSingaporeContD

I got home last night. It was a great trip. I'll post my second batch of pictures soon.

Yesterday morning (Monday) I came to work and had another full day of meetings. Jessy and I went out for sushi at lunch. Very tasty. After work I went back to the hotel and watched Rugby for a while, then at 7 PM I went over to the colonial area of the city and spent three hours walking around taking night shots with my tri-pod. Once I get back I'll post the photos -- some of them are breathtaking. I finished at 10 PM and went for dinner, then went to bed. A pretty uneventful day, but wonderful nevertheless.

Today I got up at 6 to call my boss and talk to him about a few things, then watched a great rugby match between Samoa and Tonga. After that I came to work and had my wrap-up meeting with Jessy, then went to lunch with her and the Director of Inside Sales for Asia Pacific (from Barcelona!) across the street at the clay pot rice place. VERY tasty Thai chicken rice. After lunch Jessy and I finished our wrap-up, and now I'm waiting to talk to one more person before I check out of the office, go pick up my suit, go to Chinatown and try and find some knick-knacks, and then take on my final adventure in Singapore: I'm taking the subway/train all the way around the island!

Tomorrow morning I leave for Raleigh at 7-something AM. First to Tokyo, then to Chicago, then to Raleigh. Should be a long day. And to think that this morning I woke up after having slept through the night for the first time.

I *really* like it here. Beautiful city, kind and wonderful people, cheap food, great transportation. I'll miss it.

Right-click here and select "Save as..." or something similar to "Save as..." to download the mp3 to your computer.

I've had a good weekend. I slept in yesterday morning, then went to Sim Lim Square, which is a 6-story mall with nothing but electronics shops, and bought a sweet tripod and camera bag. I wasn't feeling too well -- I've still been struggling with jet lag -- so I came back and relaxed at the hotel and watched sports on TV. After a while I went over to the mall where Jack Custom Tailor is located, and I got fitted for the suit I'd been measured for on Friday. I get to pick the stuff up on Tuesday after work.

Then I came back to the hotel again and went to sleep. I was just plain exhausted. I wanted to sleep for a couple of hours, then go out and shoot some night photos of the city. Of course, jet lag still kicking my butt, I didn't wake up until 11:30 PM. By then I figured it was too late to get dinner at a respectable restaurant, but I still decided to go down to Boat Quay and see if anything was open. I didn't feel like freaky-deaky Chinese ("Chili Fried Fish Head," "Pork Liver Dumpling," "Cod Skin with Curry Choi," to name a few of the standard items), naturally, but I had to pass through roughly a dozen crazy Chinese restaurants with their crazy Chinese restaurateurs out front trying to get me to eat there before I decided that I wasn't going to find anything non-freaky-deaky Chinese at that hour. So I went to Lau Pa Sat!

Lau Pa Sat is a hawker market in the Financial District, just one block from Red Hat's office. I went there for lunch on Thursday and had noodles, and I had been told that after dark every night of the week there would be street vendors there grilling fresh satay. Satay is a food I've wanted to try since I first knew I'd be coming to Singapore, because everyone raves about it, and it proved to be even better than I had expected it to be. It was simply delicious. The vendor I went to (there were roughly a dozen to choose from, so I chose one at random) sold them for 50 cents each, so I got 10 and called it a dinner. I got four chicken, three beef, and three mutton and loved all of them. I'm planning on going back every night for the rest of my trip. It was that good. I'm going to have to find satay in Raleigh, because it's delicious.

I walked back to the hotel from Lau Pa Sat and ate my satay, then walked down to the 7-11 one block from here and got an ice cream bar. By then it was around 1 AM and I knew I needed to try to get to sleep, but I didn't end up sleeping until around 3 AM.

I woke up around 6:15 this morning and went down for my breakfast, then dinked around until 8:15, when I got ready for church and took a taxi over there. I went to the Singapore First Ward, which is an expatriate ward. It was like being in a U.S. ward, to be honest. Tons of screaming kids, tons of mini-vans in the parking deck, tons of terrible jokes from the pulpit. :) Truthfully, though, the talks were good. The youth speaker was a kid named Doogie. The Mission President's wife spoke, and I swear, this woman, when she sang, she opened her mouth bigger than anyone I've ever seen open their mouth during song. I watched her during every song. I couldn't focus on the hymns because I was watching how big her mouth opened. Lovely gal, though. Her husband was the closing speaker, and he was the one with the neverending awful jokes. But he was a huge old Irish man, which is inherently awesome, so I enjoyed his talk.

Then I came back to the hotel and watched the BYU football game. Grrrrr. Oh well, I'm over it.

THEN I went to VivoCity and took some pictures, then walked around for a while. Had some delicious sushi from a grocery store. REALLY good sushi.

Now I'm back in the hotel doing one of two things I've spent most of my hotel time doing: Watching English soccer. The other thing I've done is watch Rugby. Lots of English soccer and lots of Rugby. I've also been able to watch a couple of Yankees/Red Sox games on ESPN Star (Broadcast from here in Singapore, so lots of English soccer and Rugby, but the occasional bit of baseball). In about a half-hour I need to head out to meet up with a co-worker and her husband for dinner. Seafood tonight. Then I'm going to go do the night photography that I had planned on doing last night.

No pictures today, but maybe tomorrow I'll post more.

Day 2 was great. I hadn't slept well during the night, but I got up yesterday morning, had my breakfast, then went to work. I met all day with Jessy on the Order Entry items, then after work I came back to the hotel and relaxed for a few. I had started getting tired at around 4 PM, but I wanted to force myself to stay up until normal sleeping time (~midnight), so I scheduled a conference call for 11:30 PM (which was 11:30 AM in Raleigh). In the meantime, I decided to go over and get measured for a new suit! It was a great experience. Today I go back at 5 PM for my fitting.

After I got fitted for the suit, I came back to the hotel, talked to some co-workers as they were getting to work in the morning (it was 9 PM here by then, so 9 AM in Raleigh), then went swimming in the hotel pool. It's on the 11th floor (of 25) and outdoor, so very cool! I'll go take some pictures of it today.

After I swam, hot-tubbed, and showered, I decided it was time to go out for dinner. I was a bit "Chinesed-out" for the day, so I chose a great little Italian place at Boat Quay. Very cool and very delicious.

I then came back to the hotel, took my conference call, and went to bed.

Overall, it was a VERY good day. Here's a link to my photos through yesterday:

http://picasaweb.google.com/boisvert/2007SeptemberSingapore

For lunch we went to this great restaurant market, like a huge food court with maybe 50 vendors. I had noodles with chicken cutlet and some kind of sauce. And a bowl of rice soup. Very tasty. Had meetings all afternoon, then went back to the hotel and crashed. I was planning on getting up at 9 PM for a conference call, but didn't hear the alarm and woke up at 11:15 PM. So I got online and chatted for a while, then decided to go out for a walk. I ended up taking a taxi over to Clarke Quay, an area of the city with lots of clubs and pubs, lots of nightlife. The taxis here are cheap! It cost me about $4 USD to get half-way across the city. That would cost $30 in a big American city.

So I got to Clarke Quay and walked around for a while. I was hungry, so I got some Haagen Dazs, then sit on the river and relaxed to the sounds of discotheques bumping in the background. Then I took a taxi back and made a call to a co-worker, and now it's 1:30 AM and time for me to try and get to sleep again, try and get caught up. Hopefully by tomorrow night I'll be done with my jet-lag issues and I'll be on a normal Singapore schedule for a few days.

It's current 10:41 AM on Thursday morning here in Singapore. That would mean it's 10:41 PM Wednesday night in Raleigh and 8:41 PM Wednesday night in Utah, where most of my readership still live. I arrived in Singapore last night at around 12:30 AM. Got through immigration and customs just fine, went to the ATM to get some cash for a taxi... No funds. Somehow my bank jumped the gun on a transaction I had scheduled for next week, so I was left with zero for money. And I couldn't remember the pin on my AMEX card, so I was double-hosed. To top it off, I hadn't brought any cash with me... I don't use exchange desks, because they charge too much, so I tend to just use ATMs to get local currency. Anyway, I had no money. I used the cell phone I checked out from Red Hat and got it taken care of (with Dad's help -- thank you!), plus I found a taxicab that took credit cards. So I finally got to my hotel at around 1:15 AM and was asleep by 2:00 AM. Jet lag hit me and woke me up a few times, and finally at 6:00 AM this morning I was up and wide awake. I'm sure this afternoon it'll hit me like a brick wall.

So, first thoughts on Singapore: WOW! It's beautiful here! Obviously Singapore is known for its cleanliness, and it shows everywhere. The trees along the highway from the airport to downtown were perfectly groomed, no trash anywhere, not even little flecks of paper on the side of the road. Orderly traffic, everything looks so professional. It's just beautiful. Tonight I will walk around and find some good food. And of course I'll take a lot of pictures. I've already taken over 100.

After a two-hour flight from Raleigh to Chicago and a 15-hour flight from Chicago to Hong Kong, I'm checking in to the ol' bloggerooski and letting my sparse readership know of my immediate whereabouts. First time flying a 747 -- in all my travels I've never flown in one -- and I had a whole row to myself! Not bad at all. Read 240 pages of "The Book of Dave" (Sorry if I'm way ahead of you, Mac!), slept five or six hours, and looked out the window at Wisconsin, Canada, Baffin Bay, northern Siberia, Mongolia, China (well, China was actually covered in clouds), and then the ocean as we landed in Hong Kong.

All I have left is a four-hour flight to Singapore. It leaves in 50 minutes. I should probably go get ready for it.

Rest assured, however, that I've taken plenty of photos already, and will plan on taking a few hundred more.

So my buddy Joel Mikkelsen has done quite a bit of recording and is an excellent performer and producer. Over the summer we had jammed out a few times, me learning some of his songs, he learning some of my old songs, and he ended up inviting me over one Sunday in July to record in the mini-studio he has set up in his room. So I went over and we cut a song, one that I wrote four years ago, entitled "Don't Make Me Say Goodnight." It was a decent little song before then, but Joel really brought the best out of it. He helped me turn it into an alt-country ditty, and oooh, do I love it.

That was in July. Flash forward to last Wednesday. Joel, on top of being a performer and producer, also has a show on WKNC 88.1 (the NC State radio station, and clearly the best local radio station if you're into indie music) every Thursday from 11 AM to 1 PM. He messaged me Wednesday and asked if he could play my song on his show Thursday. Of course I agreed to it. Then on Thursday, right at the end, he played my song. I listened to it in the car during my lunch, then ran upstairs to my desk at work and took a screenshot of the WKNC website, which shows the playlist of songs. Hooray!