Happy Hunting Ground

I really, truly hate the phrase, "Getting there is half the fun."  It must be a relic of a bygone era, where travel meant something besides being crammed in with way too many idiots.  Take the journey from UB to Seoul, for instance.  When Enkhaa got me to the airport, the check-in line was probably the longest I've ever seen (in UB, at any rate).  Then the security line was long, and so was immigration...when  I got through I only had 40 minutes til we were scheduled to take off.  Incheon was no picnic, either - Azhaar estimated I was in the immigration line an hour, and THEN I got triggered by a bunch of people who were NOT MOVING to get through customs.  This meant that I didn't get on the train into town until 11:20, and fortunately I was second in line, or I might have spent the following hour on my feet, hating life, because it was packed.  

I hadn't actually thought much about the final leg of the trip - getting to Azhaar's flat - until I wheeled my little carry-on off the elevator above Noksapyeong.  This was when I realized that I'd just assumed I'd be able to find her apartment.  As I mentioned last time, I have a pretty badass memory, but I've only been to her place twice, both times following her up the hills after midnight, and I'd received a message from her while I was waiting in the never-ending immigration line telling me to let myself in because she had a headache and was going to bed.  So even though I'm pretty good at sweet-talking people into loaning me their phones when I can't use mine, I didn't want to wake her up unless I had to.  Well, my memory came through in the end.  At the bottom of Noksapyeong hill, I found my first landmark - kimchi pots - and then got to the noraebang (I thought it was a supermarket, but I recognized it when I saw it), and when I got to the 7-11 where we bought my coke the last time I visited, it became a matter of finding the place I thought was right, and confirming it by checking the wifi names.  Easy cheesy.

This morning Azhaar (in her bedroom) messaged me (in the living room, LOL) wanting to know what I wanted to do today.  #1 on my list was the fabric market (followed closely by a call to my Dark Lord and Master to figure out when I could see hiim).  After a quick shower our consultation led to us scurrying out the door to hit Macca's (I'm reverting to the Aussie slang for everyone's favorite burger joint for the next four years...Ronald &Co. shouldn't suffer the indignity of being associated with a despot) for breakfast before taking line 1 to Dongdaemun station (where we should have taken exit 9, but we got there in the end).  Back in my misspent young adulthood, I spent a lot of time trawling the aisles for the perfect sparkly bits to add to my belly dance cossies.  It's a little slice of paradise - if you know what you're looking for, you'll find it there.  If you don't, you'll find something anyways.

Well, I don't dance much anymore - maybe I'll dust off my bedleh someday - but I'm almost as enthusiastic about my newest hobby: designing and sewing chibi plushies.  This week saw the end of a month-long sewing frenzy brought on by a half-cooked whim regarding a booth at this summer's AnimeIowa (it was a short-lived whim...at some point I realized I probably ought to be able to use a sewing machine before I go into business).  The problem is, I'm no longer satisfied making simple characters with whatever material I have on hand.  When I started thinking of it as a business, I discarded my old personal obsessions and developed new professional ones (well, sort of, anyways.  I'm still only designing characters I like...but now I take into consideration what people might be willing to pay shit tons of money for.  Also, what would look cool AF).  

Azhaar suggested we go to the fifth floor first, and get fabric afterwards.  I thought this was genius, since it meant I wouldn't have to carry tons of fabric around with me while I was trying to squeeze past people who have absolutely no awareness of their surroundings.  Like many markets, you'd best approach DDM with a plan.  When we got to the fifth floor we chose a time-honored strategy - picking a corner and working our way up and down the aisles, stopping to pick up the things on my list:  ribbons, buttons, chain, buckles.  I was looking for very specific things, but as mentioned above, if you know what you want, you can probably find it.  If you're patient enough, anyways.  Raycie LaRaye taught me this strategy,  and it served me well - by 1:30 I'd found everything I needed, and helped Azhaar find a few things she didn't, but since she was having fun I didn't feel too bad.

After sitting down for a few minutes, I decided I wanted to pop down to the cloth floors to look for iridescent fabric...and if they had any colors of fleece I needed, it would probably manage to find its way home with me.  I stuck my LeSport duffel bag in my backpack for this exact purpose, but when I got to the fourth floor most of the stalls had rolled down their shutters.  Between the time we had walked past on our way to the beads and jewelry, it had become a ghost town, so maybe Azhaar's suggestion backfired a little.  An excuse to go back on Monday or Tuesday is not a bad thing.

Shopping doesn't seem like that strenuous activity, but we approached it with killing intent, so we were famished.  While we were at Macca's that morning, I noticed that they were now serving mozzarella cheese sticks.  This food has been haunting me for several months - in Osaka the Kawaii Kingpin suggested we stop into Lotteria for some when we got back to Kyoto, but neither of us actually remembered.  By the time something random dug the thought out of my head, I was back in UB, a million miles from anywhere that would serve them.  Over Christmas break considered trying them at the Lotteria in Incheon, or else possibly at Denny's back home, but neither actually happened, and the ones I found at a restaurant in UB were completely unsatisfying.  So when I pointed out the fact that Macca's had them, and she suggested Lotteria's were actually really awesome, I'd come full circle.  True to both of their words, they were amazing...but I was a little underwhelmed by the serving - two short sticks.  There's surely a joke to be made in there, but I've got four more days to make it, so I'll leave it there for now.

Kyoto Light, Kyoto Night

As I began typing this, I had one day left in Japan, and I found myself wondering if it was a mistake to come.  Not because it was a bad experience, but the opposite - it has been a fantastic week.  Even if I haven't been here that long, I have a feeling of belonging.  It is not all jaw-droppingly beautiful landscapes and temples.  Taking the bus to Roketsu to make my noren, I had to admit that the buildings squashed in side by side were not the most aesthetically pleasing thing I'd ever seen...and yet, I love them, too, love the feeling that you could wander down a different cramped alley every day for a year and see something unique every time.  And if you wanna stick with temples and shrines, there are more than enough to keep you going for a good long while.  As we were walking through Sanjo my second day here, we passed two or three moderately large shrines.  Right in the middle of a shopping area!  It seems like most of them have some sort of festival at some point.  That afternoon when I'd gotten back to the house, my host Taka-san heard drums, and had me come to the window in the second floor of the house to watch a procession walk past.  That is the sort of sight I think I could watch all the time and never get bored.  In Kyoto, I'd have the chance to find out.

Take, for example, the Funaoka Matsuri.  Northward and west of the imperial palace is the Kenkun Shrine, which is where Oda Nobunaga is enshrined.  Oda Nobunaga is the warlord who essentially united Japan, bringing the Warring States period to an end.  I'm not much on history, although with several thousand years of it, I find Japan's much more interesting than America's.  However, I've been watching an anime about swords that have been turned into young men (yes, I know it makes pretty much no sense, but they're cute sword boys and I've watched enough anime at this point to be able to overlook most of the homoerotic overtones).  Their purpose is to protect the time stream from being changed, and in one episode they go back in time to make sure Nobunaga's assassination actually takes place.  When they were reminiscing about him, they didn't seem particularly fond, but at the end of the episode they were all kind of nostalgic.  I'm telling you this to give you some sort of background...if you really want some hard facts, you can wikipedia it.  Suffice it to say that he's kind of a hero.

So it's fitting that there's a celebration of his accomplishments and contributions to modern Japan.  It wasn't as crowded as the other two festivals I made it to - a little more solemn, too.  The whole thing was in Japanese, so I only had a vague idea of what was going on, but it was very interesting.  The ceremony started with music on traditional instruments, their cries sounding like heartbreak.  There were prayers - fortunately I go to church often enough to recognize an invitation to stand and bow your head, whether I understand the language or not - and various offerings where brought into the shrine by the officiators.  Then there were the performances.

There were four performances this year.  The first was a singing/dancing performance which - if I understood it correctly, was a variety of Noh, followed by a masked dancer performing bugaku (my knowledge of Japanese culture is not so extensive as to pull that out of nowhere...I used Discover Kyoto's website for my crib sheet).  The third was - I think - a geisha dance.  It was a graceful series of movements set to music by a lady - albeit an older one - in a gorgeous kimono, at any rate.  When she finished, branches were presented to VIP audience members, who presented them at the shrine, at which point the ceremonial part of it seemed to be over, although we had one final show - swordsmanship, with wooden swords.  The "winner" of the bout demonstrated his real sword on a rolled tatami mat, which lay before the shrine in three neat pieces when I got up to take a look.  And that seems fitting for a warrior's shrine.

Nights are generally downtime or shopping time when I travel.  It's been nice catching up with the Kawaii Kid on some of those nights, and at first when he told me he'd have to cut our Friday night meet-up short, I wasn't exactly thrilled, but we had a good chat and I was seeing him the next day...and then I realized that now that I was free, I could go up to Kodai-Ji and see the autumn illumination.  I really, really love the Japanese sense of aesthetics.  Sit under cherry trees watching the moon through their petals?  Sounds like fun to me.  In the fall, they kind of do the same thing, except with the changing colors of the leaves, and they call it momiji.  I may be missing the best part of it (again, WHY do I have to go home???), but Friday night the first temple on the schedule lit up their grounds, which they will continue to do til the end of November.

I love visiting temples at night.  They just have a different ambiance than during the day, as if the youkai are out to play.  Kodai-Ji was no exception, even with everyone wandering up and down the paths.  Even with the light show in the Zen rock garden....

Actually, I'm pretty sure I spied a few demons in the actual light show.  I'm not much of a fan of them, but I've got to say, this one was very well done...at one point, the light transformed the sand in the garden into rippling water, and the gate turned to gold.  It was genius.

The most magical part, though, was the reflections of the trees on the water.  More than anything I wanted to see it in a week or two, when all the trees would be on fire and the air just a bit chillier, but the words of Frost echoed in my head: "The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep,  And miles to go before I sleep."  There is still a lot to do before I bid my current school goodbye.

However, it is possible that my subconscious is neither a fan of Frost or else just didn't care, because it may have tried to sabotage me into actually staying this morning.  When I finally went to bed last night, I set my alarm for 6:30.  For some reason, the last time I looked at the flight schedule I scrawled into my travel journal, I locked onto my arrival time in Incheon (11:20), thinking it was my departure from Osaka.  When my alarm when off, I asked myself if I was feeling too lazy for one more walk - I never made it onto the Philosopher's Path, or got further into Fushimi-Inari-Taisha than the first knot of tourists.  And then I looked up my e-ticket, just in case...only to realize that my flight left at 9:30.  From Osaka.  Which was an hour and a half away.

From thence proceeded a string of profanities that probably woke up everyone in the house as I stripped and redressed in a panic, shoving my pajamas into my soon (I hoped) to be checked luggage - but I'm calling it payback for the snoring from the next room.  Blondie was right when she said that you can hear everything through traditional Japanese walls.  I clomped down the stairs, threw on my shoes and socks, locked the door and dropped the keys in the mail slot, as Taka-san requested, finally walking around the corner and on my way.  And then I realized I'd left my iPad on the counter.  For one moment, I thought, "Forget it - I don't like the darn thing anyways!" but that seems wasteful, even for me.  I got back to the door and was wondering how loud I would have to get to wake someone up when I realized that I was able to get the keys back - they hadn't slid all the way into the mail slot, and retrieved my technology.  A quick walk out to the street and a moment of panic ensued when I wondered if there were even any taxis on the streets at 6:50 on a Sunday morning, since that was my plan...spend a gajillion yen on a taxi, rather than miss my flight.  Fortunately the very kind driver who picked me up a minute or two later convinced me to take the airport limousine bus, and even though it seemed to be the slowest thing on the road, somehow I made it with just enough time to check in, get through security with the help of the very kind Korean air agent, and get to the gate before boarding.

Considering the number of mishaps I've had this week, you may be thinking, "Wow, what a gong show!  No way I'd travel with you!"  (Unless you're my dad, in which case you are probably thinking - for neither the first nor the last time - "Get your head out of your ass!")  But for the record...well, you're not entirely wrong.  I'm not usually quite this bad, though, and at least now you know that it's possible to get from Kyoto to Osaka and on your flight in less than three hours.

The Stupid Story About My Flight to Hong Kong

So I'm sure I'll have a word or two to say about my trip home at some point, but not even two full days after getting back to UB I have found my way back to the airport, waiting to board a plane to Hong Kong.  I say that as if it was a surprise, in spite of the fact that I purchased the bloody ticket myself back in April, but the fact is, it kinda was.

Blondie was the one who alerted me to a great fare to Hong Kong - less than $500 dollars round trip!  At that time, I was hoping to take my students there next year, but I needed to do a reconnaissance run first so I knew what I was getting myself into, which made the ticket she found ideal.  I went home and checked it out on cheapoair.com, and there it was - Air Mauritanie, flight 885, nonstop to Hong Kong.  I was a little sketched out because Air Mauritanie supposedly folded in 2007, and what was an African airline doing running direct flights from UB to HK, anyways?  But it was too good to pass up, so I booked it.

Then I started to freak out.  Blondie never got a confirmation for her flight, and then they emailed her and said the fare was more expensive, so she cancelled her ticket.  I called and asked about my ticket, but they told me mine was confirmed, and when I told them I didn't think I wanted to go, told me that they would keep half of the cost, and the airline would charge $100 for canceling, so it seemed like a waste, since if it really was a bogus ticket I'd get my money back, anyway.

And that is why I hadn't done any packing for this trip and was still thinking about what I was going to do in my classroom this week at 12:30 last night when I looked at Chinggis airport's website and realized, "Oh, shit - I actually am going to Hong Kong!"  So I packed (just my camera backpack, because I am SO done with checked luggage!), got a shower, booked a room at a guest house, and set an alarm.  When I woke up, I called for a taxi and brushed my teeth, and now here I am...waiting for my flight.  On Hunnu Air.  Because apparently someone forgot to tell the lovely people at cheapoair.com that Air Mauritanie no longer exists and the airline code MR now stands for Hunnu Air.  I'm not exactly thrilled to be going, which sucks, because Hong Kong is supposed to be a really fun place, but all the same I'd rather save my money and get ready for the school year.  But I'm sure I'll find a way to enjoy myself one way or the other.

How to Enjoy an Additional 9 Hours Stuck in Incheon

So, I'm off for the next week to visit the Tsataan reindeer herders northeast of Khuvsgul Lake.  It's a magical place that doesn't have this thing called In Ter Net, which means no blogging.  Alas, I have not left you comfortless.  I've been sitting on this particular post since Christmas (aka, the time of year when I plan how to get home with the maximum hours layed-over in Seoul to catch up with my peeps), because I knew that a time would come when I would need it.  That time is now.

I have waxed ecstatic on multiple occasions about how much I love Korea.  The main international airport, Incheon, is just one of the many, many reasons for that love, but considering how many times I've been through there, it's a big one.  Let's start the "How-do-I-love-thee-let-me-count-the-ways" game with the transportation.  There are fast trains that connect the airport with downtown Seoul.  If you want to go elsewhere and have to make more than one transfer to get there, there are the airport limo buses.  Personally the buses are my favorite way to go, because as often as not I am heading to Bundang to catch up with my Dark Lord and Master, and it takes a little more than an hour, I think.  They're more expensive than taking a train, but they're not called Limousine Buses for nothing - the seats are luxuriously big and comfortable, and I have yet to be on one that was packed, so you should have room to stretch out.  And from there, well, my friends, Seoul is your oyster.

But if you can't be bothered leaving the airport, no matter how hard I sell Korea to you, here are some things you can easily do without walking outside.

1. Pretend to be Kim, Yu-Na (without the whole Russian gold medal scandal):  That, ladies and gentlemen, is an ice skating rink.  Yes, there is an ice rink in Incheon airport.  You'll need to pass through immigration to get there, but the fact remains that you can rent a pair of skates and work on your triple lutzes while you're waiting for your connection.  This picture was taken in January, but it was still up in April, so as far as I know it's a year round thing.

2. Catch a movie:  Again, this is outside the secure area, but I have yet to undergo a full-body search no matter how many times I've been through Seoul.  Oh sure - you may be thinking you just spent 13 hours sitting and watching movies (or are about to - unless you're flying Delta, 'cause I had a trans-Pacific flight with them once that had NO seatback entertainment and let me tell you how much THAT sucked).  However, all those movies are OLD movies.  Also, there's something to be said for watching a movie in Korea.  It's an experience.  You get to choose your seat.  It's about as expensive as a movie back home, but nobody really cares if you bring your own snacks - although I wouldn't flaunt it, since it's been several years since I went to the theater in Korea.  And there are subtitles in Korean, which means that sometimes people talk during the movie - not necessarily a good thing, but one kind of interesting to experience.

3. Take in some art:  Back into the secure area, there's an art gallery.  The last show (possibly the permanent exhibition) was about the art of hangul - the Korean alphabet.  Ask any Korean who their most famous leader was and they will tell you King Sejong Daewon.  He decided that the literacy of his people was more important than written snobbery and invented Korea's alphabet to replace Chinese characters.  As someone who can read Korean but knows only two Chinese characters (love and mountain), I think the man had a point.  This art show is testament to the fact that Koreans generally agree.

4.  Make some art:  There's a couple of Korean culture centers in the airport, and they let you make crafts for free.  Whether or not you feel that you are a budding Picasso, you can't beat the price tag, and it's a nice way to take up a half-hour or so of your layover.  Last time I visited them and made a coffee tumbler that commemorated my visit to Seoul with my girl-crushes, Champ and Little Miss Catwalk.  This lady's doing printmaking, which seriously requires NO artistic talent, and has been an option as long as I can remember.

5.  Try some music that is NOT K-Pop:  The aforementioned culture centers also have music and dance performances, although you'll have to either be lucky or ask when they are happening.  And while you're making art and listening to music, you can admire Korea's traditional dress, the hanbok.

6.  Find out why Korea's internet is world-famous:  Not only is it fast, it's ubiquitous.  Some of the internet providers have even sponsored free internet cafes, so if you used up your battery on your flight and don't have time to wait for your laptop or iPad to power up, you can use one of their devices.  Is that cool or what?

7.  Free shower:  Are there any two sweeter sounding words when you've been on a flight for 13 hours and still have three more to go after your layover?  I think not.  This, good people, is the true genius of Incheon International Airport, and I think a large part of why it is a perennial rival to Hong Kong and Singapore for the World Airport Award.

Although the comfortable digs and plentiful power points don't hurt, either. 

And probably the Starbucks, Burger King, Kraze Burger, etc...the good restaurants might have something to do with it, too.  If you're flying to Mongolia, go through Seoul.  Seriously.  Because if you're going to get stuck, you'll have a much better time here than in Beijing.

How to Enjoy an Additional 9 Hours Stuck In Beijing

Well, I mentioned Mongolia's winds kept me airport bound last Sunday 9 hours longer than it should have.  It's possible that I jinxed myself, because as I was hustling down to my gate in the first place, I noticed the fountain and thought, "If I ever get stuck in Beijing an ungodly length of time again, I can work on a blog about it."  Well, the sad thing is, there's really not that much good to say about Beijing's international terminal.  This is what I came up with to do...

 1. Look at all the teapots for sale, and try to take sneaky pictures.  I'm introducing ceramics to my art program this year, and one of my classes will be hand-building a teapot.  I wrote up an actual, real lesson plan and everything, and am planning to use an excerpt from Sherlock.  I bought a couple of teapots in Pearl City last Saturday, but there was a bigger selection at the airport, a fact that I mourned for just long enough to realize how much more expensive airport teapots are.  Then I decided to take some photos so I could show a greater variety of examples.  Which the ladies at the tea place did NOT like.  I tried to go back and get more later, with my phone turned on silent.  It didn't work.

2. Visit Starbucks.  Again.   And again.  We don't have Starbucks in Mongolia.  Since I don't drink coffee, I don't miss it that much, but when I get the chance to enjoy a caramel cream frappucino, I take it!  Their mozzarella tomato basil sandwich thing is pretty good, too.  Not as good as Pizza Hut, but faster, more portable, and since Round Table moved into UB, the fact that they use actual pepperoni doesn't hold as much water as it used to.

3. Revisit past Beijing Airport experiences and wonder what might have been.  'Nuff said.

4. Pretend you're somewhere in China besides the Beijing Airport.  Ugh.  Seriously.  I'd deal with the stinky tofu if I could trade being here for being in a real water town.

5. Enjoy the melodic sounds of the fountain.  Except that there's no bench nearby on which to sit, and you're so crazy after being stuck here for six hours that climbing in has started to sound like a good idea.  So maybe the fountain's not such a great place to hang out at this point.

There's no McDonald's or Burger King or really any good restaurants once you're in the international terminal, and the security process is "thorough" enough that unless you're into that sort of thing, leaving is probably not worth it.  There is no Facebook or Youtube on that side of the Great Firewall, either, so you'd best hope you have a book or two, because being stuck in Beijing is hell.  If you're heading towards Mongolia in spring, you're better off going through another airport.  Like Seoul.  Which, given my luck, you may be hearing about in three weeks, but I'll be a lot happier in Incheon, for SO many reasons.

Long, Strange Trip

I can honestly say I've never been so pleased with a trip that included food poisoning and a flight delayed 13 hours after already spending 9 hours in the very, very cold Beijing airport (I'm not kidding about the cold...having no other option I bought a bottle of water, drank it all, then filled it with scalding hot water.  That did the trick).

I had big plans for yesterday.  I was going to busily upload photos to facebook and start blogging about the trip - starting with the food poisoning!  (That post is to come).  I figured I'd be in my apartment before noon, fix myself a delicious bowl of pasta for lunch, maybe go get things in order at school so I could kick out all my reports.  Instead, at 11:30 I was being shunted from one place to another...I think we were either being ushered back through immigration or waiting for a second shuttle bus.

See, apparently it was windy in UB.  There were lots of conspiracies floating around - that the wind wasn't that bad, for example, and they just didn't want to send off a flight that wasn't full - but today there are four or five teachers out whose flights were completely canceled, and the flight home was probably the roughest I've ever been on, so I don't doubt it anymore, and therefore, all the vitriol aimed at the Air China representative was probably misplaced.  I didn't yell at anyone, for once.  When I was talking about the fact that this would be great blog material with my new friends, I was warned to avoid bitterness, that nobody likes a bitter blogger...well, I know at least one of my six readers looks forward to my angry blogs (right, Emily?) but I ended up finding the whole situation remarkably copacetic.  I just wanted a blanket or a hotel room or something, because DAMN that airport was cold.

I did mentally complain a little about the loss of the time to unwind and unpack, but I couldn't get too upset about it.  Because in the process of being led off to the hotel in the airport, and then to the hotel outside the airport, and then back again through immigration, et cetera, I got to know a couple of my fellow travelers - a French guy and an Israeli/American one who live here.  I NEVER do this.  I usually find talking to the people I'm stuck on a plane - or in an airport - with awkward and pointless, but these guys were cute and interesting and so I spent a lot of the day talking to them and ended up trading numbers with them.  Whether or not we end up meeting again in UB (which I would like) I was really grateful to have met them yesterday, because it meant that instead of writing this as one of those bitter, angry posts, I'm telling you about another rainbow.  And as much as I would have liked to be at home in my bed, now that it's over with, I don't think I'd trade the experience.  Which is not to say that I'm going to start chatting my seatmates or anything, because I still stand by the fact that people are annoying - one only has to go to China to figure this out.  But more on that later.

The world (at large)

Never let anyone tell you I can't be spontaneous. After hearing the Evil One tell me, "Come to Singapore! Come to Singapore! It's very nice! You can hang out with me AND Kit!" for a week, I got all sorts of spontaneous and bought myself a ticket to leave the next day once I got my passport back. So here I am, in her room at the Regent, lazing (yes, I know I'm in Singapore, I ought to be doing something, but she made me go to church. I went to church two days ago! Also, I didn't sleep much on the flight over, and we were walking just about LITERALLY all day yesterday...all of which you lucky bums get to hear about).

I thought I was pretty clever with the ticket I got. Being a denizen of RAK and not driving a car presents some problems when it comes to getting to the Dubai airport. However, the Sailors were going to be going to church Friday morning, and I figured I could just leave church, find a taxi, and take it from there to Dubai. I did the same thing on the way back, but unfortunately, I kind of screwed myself over in this, because it means I'll be stuck in the Mumbai airport for ten hours. And the most I can say on that account is, at least it's not nineteen stuck in Sheremetyevo. They actually did me one better and drove me to the airport after church (it was the quickest we've gotten out of the church since I started going with them a month ago).

At the airport, I adopted a travel buddy. I'm not sure what it is about me, but apparently I seem like the kind of woman you want to have take you under her wing at an airport, because this is the second time I've had a complete stranger ask me to do so. A Filipina girl, in this case, was standing behind me in line, and it looked like we might possibly be the only two women on the flight (actually, we were two of about six, so sue me for jumping to conclusions), and she asked me if we could request seats together as she didn't want to be alone with all those mustached Indian men (honestly, neither did I - there is something more than a little scary about being the only woman in a crowd, especially when I know that they are all staring at me). She was a very sweet woman, but by the time we finally got to Singapore, I was was happy to be rid of her, because I'm just that kind of prickly person, and it irritates me to have someone act THAT dependent toward me.

I was also in a kind of a crabby mood when I got there because I flew on the red-eye from Chennai, and I couldn't sleep well, and I just don't like airplane travel. Also, I've been fighting a cold this week. Which is why it was good that Evil didn't come to the airport to get me. By the time I'd been in the cab as long as it takes to get to the hotel from the airport, I was okay with the fact that she had coerced me into spending that much time on a cramped plane with a bunch of people who don't understand that deodorant is an essential for a peaceful world, because Singapore is lush and green and beautiful and reminds me a lot of Bundang, with high-rises and hills and did I mention how green it is? RAK is actually pretty well-foliaged for the middle east, but Singapore is absolutely verdant. Also, it's really close to the equator - as close as I've ever been, although I still haven't crossed it - but the weather is quite lovely. We had rain yesterday and although it got pretty humid, for the most part it was totally liveable.

So, what have we been doing? Walking, walking, and eating ice cream. After Evil's physical therapy appointment, we walked up Emerald Hill and had an adventure trying to find a new way back (didn't quite happen, but it was fun exploring). We took the subway to Little India and wandered around - I got to listen to The Evil One's Tour-of-Hyderabad-via-Singapore, and I bought sari fabric that I'm going to use to make a tablecloth for my otherwise fairly barren apartment. Jane basically used me as her packhorse/slave under the excuse of her gimpy arm, which is an impressive array of colors. We came back to the Regent just in time to get ahold of Kit, who came over and we went walking (again...my poor feet! If I walked more in RAK in the last month than I did the whole time I was back in Iowa, then I think I will walk more this week in Singapore than I have in RAK AND Iowa), ending up in Chinatown, where they had a celebration for the beginning of Autumn, with lights and performances and fireworks (which we watched as we were eating ice cream at Swensen's....mmmmm....)

It was loads of fun, and promises to be more, but it's a chill Sunday, which is nice because my body is NOT happy with me for abusing it after long months of inactivity.