2009 - July 5 (Singapore)

Singapore (July 5, Day 5)

Good morning Sunday. Your first question should be, "Day 3? What happened to Day 2?". And that is a very good question that deserves an answer. Day 2 was lost to the Pacific Ocean in the middle of our flight to Tokyo. The good thing is that Day 2, the 4th of July, was also the day that North Korea was taking pot shots across Japan and into the Pacific, right across where we were flying. I guess we were lucky because there was no July 4th for our plane. Lucky us.

After checking into the Grand Hyatt at 1AM on Sunday morning, we rested up and got over jet lag as much as possible. By the time we got up it was late afternoon.

This was our first day in Singapore and I introduced Kimberley to adventures on the Metro. We got her an EZ-Link card and I reloaded mine. This is the greatest value in Singapore. For about 60 Singapore cents you can ride one-way to almost any place on the island. It never takes more than 20 minutes and most of the time there is only a light crown on the train. The cards are good for all the buses too, so getting around is really easy. There are train platforms very near wherever you are, signs indicating where to find them, bus stops all over the place. The trains are clean and bright, the process is all automated as are the trains themselves, and they run perfectly on time. This beats any metro process I have seen except perhaps the San Francisco BART.

Then we decided to do a bit of shopping at the Paragon. This is a local multistory high-end mall. We found lots of bling toys. Nifty diamond earrings, about 2 carats each, VVS (very, very, slight inclusions), completely colorless, perfect cut, glowed like stars, and on sale for only 380,000 Singapore Dollars (about $260,000 US). Rubies and emeralds the size of marbles, Tag Heuer watches ($1800 - $4500), antiques, lady's handbags and clutch purses that were paved with Swarovski crystals and shaped like toy Schnauzers, leopards, blue birds, eggs, and all basically like Faberge dainties. We found a restaurant for a late lunch. It was Lawry's The Prime Rib of Singapore. This is the same Lawry’s that makes the steak seasoning you buy in the stores. I had no idea they operated restaurants. Apparently they have about 8 of them around the world. So we stopped in for Afternoon Indulgence of Savories and Sweets. These indulgences were special selections of entrees and desserts that you mixed and matched to your appetite. They were only 12 Singapore dollars per person. I had a novel interpretation of Roast Beef and Yorkshire pudding. The beef was sliced into thin shavings, mixed with some julienne root vegetables, and then wrapped up like a pita wrap. But the wrapping was Yorkshire pudding in a thin sheet. The entire roll was then sliced into medallions and served with Au Jus. I also had a dessert of very tiny warm scones, about 2 inches across, with Devonshire cream. The scones were moist and dusted with granulated sugar. They were perfect. I do believe that a southern biscuit, properly made, and finished the same way would taste just as good. But all too often homemade biscuits are actually pretty tough and floury. But these were absolutely grand. The rains came down on us while dined, and after, as we walked home. Later we had dinner at Pete's place, an Italian restaurant in the underground part of the Grand Hyatt. We kept the meal simple, just an antipasto plate and we shared a chocolate and Amaretto fondue dessert with lady fingers, biscotti, bananas, berries, and sponge cake.

Back at the hotel I cannot connect to the corporate network correctly to do work from the hotel. Send emails on my Blackberry to get help. But it is still Saturday morning in Houston so no hope of rescue for at least one more day. Trying everything to make stuff work. Have a nearly crippled laptop that takes every trick I know to keep operating and accessing data I need to do my work. This is a real bother since everything was working when I left the States.