Komban wa!

I'm sitting at the Admiral's Club at the Narita Tokyo Airport as I write this, still relatively OK after the seven hour flight from Singapore. Anyone want to start a betting pool on how coherent I'll be after another eleven hours to DFW?

I was going to do a major blog entry yesterday, but my flight was unceremoniously cancelled due to bad weather in Japan. You'd think that ex-worshippers of Amaterasu would get more sunshine than others, but it turns out they have rain here too.

One of the final tipping points that made me start a blog was the urge not to let so many of the million moments I live out everyday - and then forget - go away. (Cue a dying, but still HOT!, Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner - "Like tears...in...rain. ). An interesting thing that I'm learning about myself is that, like so many other things, I have to be in the mood to blog. How the day went plays a huge part of it - if I'd tried yesterday, holed up in my hotel room and staring out at the worst! pollution! in! Singapore! since! 1997!, I probably would have pulled a Shining - and remember, Jack didn't have copy/paste at the Overlook hotel, so mine would have REALLY bad.

But life goes on.

Over the next couple of days, while I battle jet lag (ugh) and getting back into "normal" work, I want to systemitize and synthesize what I've seen and done over the past two weeks. Then who knows? Maybe it will continue past that point. Maybe not. But we'll always have Singapore.

Walkin Around

Merlion
Originally uploaded by jonsirhendrey.

Today was my Big Trek through a fair part of what's known as the Downtown Core of Singapore City. I started out from the hotel and retraced my steps at the Esplanade, then struck across the bridge to Merlion Park (and yes, the picture is that of said Merlion - neat, no?) After that, I cut across through the Anderson Bridge and got peeks at a couple of museums, the Singaporean Parliament, and the Supreme Court Building.

My first major experience with the kind of hypershopping that's common here came next. I had walked a few miles and was rapidly losing the last of my body moisture to the buckets of sweat coming off me (it didn't get above 90, but the humidity was like New Orleans); I then spied the "Funan: The IT Mall". IT as in Information Technology...squeeee! I ducked in and spent an hour or so on its five floors of laptop shops, consumer electronics, mobile phones (including the latest Sony Ericsson models that I covet but won't work here....grrrr), and some very interesting food shops - unlike other parts of Singapore I've seen, these were more skewed toward Japanese or "American" restaurants. Not only was there a KFC/Taco Bell/Pizza Hut restaurant, but a Swensen's as well - offering, among other things, "Tennessee Chicken". I decided to pass them by.

Next, I walked to what could possibly be the most intense consumer experience I've ever been in : Orchard Street. I'd been through this area by car several times on my way to the hotel from work, but being on foot allowed me to see the sheer scale of all the stores, food pavilions, smaller shops, stands, and stalls. I have a couple of pictures in my Flickr archive of the experience, but I don't think they do it justice. It makes my trips to shopping districts in Tokyo and New York look calm by comparison.

Say it ain't so, Roger...

Surprise, another baseball steroid story. Perhaps it would be easier to list the players that haven't been doped?

A Week on the Other Side of the World.

Singapore Skyline
Originally uploaded by jonsirhendrey.

After an "active" week at work, and one day of complete veggery, I'm posting photos and blogging. I plan to do some walking today and take more shots.

Singapore is a fascinating place. Its combined land area is less than 270 square miles, but it's as developed as any American city you could think of (perhaps a bit more so, if I may be so bold). It's fourth in the world currency market, after London, New York, and Tokyo. Of all the countries in the world, it ranks twenty-fifth in the UN Human Development Index - above Portugal, South Korea, and Cyprus. (The US is tenth.) Billions of dollars in development and financial projects are pouring into the country every year.

I risk becoming a statistic-spouting drone here in response to a psychic burr that's been stuck in my mind since I agreed to come here. Not to knock my friends, but their reactions after I mentioned this trip may as well have been choreographed down to the last question - a few variations, but otherwise the same litany:

1. Where was that again, near Japan? (Sure, like Iceland is near New York.)

2. Didn't they have that coup? (No, that's Thailand.)

3. Don't they hate Americans? (What a sad commentary that is. I think most of us expect anyone outside the U.S. to hate us. And for the record, I've experienced nothing but unfailingly courteous people here.)

4. Didn't they cane someone/throw someone in jail for chewing gum/practice a command economy/have no economy? (In short, yes, no, no, and how freaking crazy are you?)

I found myself becoming the de facto ambassador of Singapore to Texas, trying to educate some people as to where I was going to be for the next few weeks.

Asia in general, and "Asian Tiger" countries like Singapore, are truly our inheritors, much as the US was the inheritor of European political and economic revolutions extant when our nation was born. I recall a passage from "The Red Badge of Courage" about the flame of American liberty being born from the fires of England's; one could say much the same for the economic prosperity that's sweeping this part of the world. The 20th Century was, as is so often mentioned, "The American Century". It's hard to imagine that fifty years from now, when these nascent powerhouses exert the influence that they're gathering to themselves now. I hope that they learn from some of our mistakes as well as our triumphs. (/soapbox)

I've posted a plethora of photos (and you do know what a plethora is, don't you?) on Flickr of my trip so far - mainly Downtown Core shots, but even those IMHO are interesting - the juxtaposition of the old and new here is striking. Unfortunately, storms yesterday reduced my adventures to the gym and a couple of malls, but I'll make up for it today.

Basel Al Fresco

Basel Al Fresco
Originally uploaded by jonsirhendrey.

A pic of me to use in my blog.

Grausigkeit-Flug nach Singapur

I know, I know...why am I entitling this entry with a German title, when Singapore counts English as its main language, followed by Malay, Tamil and Mandarin?

First, NEVER QUESTION ME! Many mortals have made that mistake and few are left to tell the tale. This is the Book of Jon, not the Book of you. Second, although 恐怖飞行向新加坡 falls off the tongue trippingly, there is no other language on the planet that expresses Dark Side emotions better than German. I took it for four years, so I know what I'm talking about. (And for the record, it means "Horror Flight to Singapore".

You know those stories they tell little boys at night to frighten them away from being business travelers, about multihour waits IN planes on the runway? Trust me, it's all true...imagine, if you dare, being in an MD-80 for six hours on the tarmac in sweaty, sunny Austin. Our pilot, an otherwise very nice guy, made the monumental mistake of thinking he could beat approaching storms in DFW, where we were headed. This was not Good Thinking.

The funniest thing about the experience was observing people's reactions on the flight during the wait. The flight attendants, angels all, did their best to prevent a revolution from breaking out (I could see it now, the People's Republic of Runway 13E). Being a 30 minute flight under normal circumstances, the plane wasn't stocked with many luxuries like, say, "water". In the end, though, people were far nicer than I would have thought possible, and we pulled into DFW around 5 PM (original arrival time: 10:30 AM).

Needless to say, my previously straightforward plans to go to Singapore via DFW through Narita were lying in smouldering, smoky shambles. Around the fourth hour of our captivity, I got on the horn to AA and begged for some kind of alternate routing; they came up with DFW > SFO > Kong Kong > Singapore. FUN! I arrived in SF a very bleary, tired man; it was the first time I'd been in their International Terminal, though, and seeing the Ultra Modernity of it all perked me up a bit.

Cathay Pacific was an amazing airline to fly on. Not only were the flight attendants courteous to a fault, but the amenities were flawless - from the AV entertainment (including the "Serenity" channel, full of calming music, meditation routines and relaxation techniques) to the food, which was fantastic. The only note of discord was about two-thirds of the way to HK; some bastard in the rear of the plane decided to rough up his wife, leaving her with a nasty bruise on her arm and some very understandable emotional trauma. She ended up sitting in the empty seat between me and another passenger; as her story trickled out via talks with the flight attendants, my blood was boiling - he had done things like that before, including leaving her in the middle of another trip for the airport after a fight. PSYCHO! That's not a relationship, that's a book in the making on dysfunctionality.

Hong Kong airport was beautiful; a variation on the Denver International Airport theme, but done right this time. We got in very early; the only store open was Starbucks. And this is yet more proof that STARBUCKS RULES THE COSMOS. Not only were they the ONLY shop open in the entire airport when I passed by, but they gave me a warm fuzzy comforty feeling by giving me the same anomymous, mass market drink I could have gotten in Austin. The 21st Century is so beautiful, I'm crying.

Now that I'm in Singapore and finally getting over the jet lag, I'm starting to take some pictures and will post those this evening. This is a beautiful island that's busting out in a million directions at once.