Sunday, May 29, 2011

Bali!

The best thing about living in Singapore, is the proximity to amazing destinations in Asia! Despite the fact that P is crazy busy with school work, he has a long list of places he wants to visit before we leave. The first on the list was Bali! So exactly 4 days after my 18 hour flight from Vancouver to Singapore, I was on another flight to Denpasar! The last time I had been to Bali was 2001 - 10 years ago(!!!) - and it had (not surprisingly) changed a lot! But it was still a magical place and our three days there were perfect! Here are some highlights:

The beaches! Swimming in the gigantic waves was just awesome, but so was lounging away the afternoon!


The food! Satay, Nasi Goreng, Gado-Gado, and fresh watermelon juice every day!


The sunsets!


The monkeys! Okay, this wasn't exactly a highlight per se, because at times they were terrifying, but it was very cool to see them up close and to take a walk in the jungle!


I love a good market!! Lucky for P, we didn't stay too long and with the Indonesian rupiah as it was, the bag that I did buy was less than the cost of a sandwich. A cheap sandwich.


The scenery! Driving through the island, we saw miles of beautiful terraced rice fields!



First days in Singapore!

I arrived in Singapore exactly 2 weeks ago, and exactly one week after P. The third semester was already in full swing when I arrived so my first day in Singapore was a poor welcome of, ``Here`s your house key, have a nice day!``. I was also not prepared for the fact that P had absolutely no food in the house and it was a public holiday and so every shop and restaurant in the city seemed to be closed!! After snacking on nothing but leftover airplane almonds and water for most of the day, I was going crazy and so when P finally got home at 10pm he ordered pizza delivery! Not a great intro to life in Singy.

Our apartment here is great! Especially compared to the tiny home in Avon we endured for four months. It is large and spacious, and even though we share it with another couple (K and M from Greece), it feels like our own. Luckily we have air conditioning because it hovers around 30 degrees every day!

During that first week in Singapore, I saw P an average of 30 minutes per day. Definitely a shock after long leisurely lunches and dinners together in Fontainebleau, but I recovered from my jet lagged happily by the pool and caught up with the few friends that came to Singapore from Fonty as well. There was a Buddhist festival during that first week and so me and some of the partners from Fonty explored Chinatown together!


Another highlight has been a visit from my good friend Tim!! Visiting from his new home in India, we went on an impromptu foodie tour of Singapore and found all of the foods that we had been missing from home! For Tim that included hunting down jars and jars of Adam`s peanut butter to take back with him, and we both were amazed when we discovered an American breakfast joint, with bacon!! If you look closely, you can see that between the layers of my pancakes there are actually layers of bacon and eggs! PERFECTION!



P was home from school by 8pm that night (yahoo!!!) and so we went to our favourite hawker center Lau Pa Sat for some SATAY! Tim and P proceeded to polish off 50 skewers of meat and prawns, and a crayfish.



Tim`s visit was a short one, but it was so nice to see someone from home! After he left on Saturday morning, P was back to school for work with group mates and I, not having the jet lag excuse to stand on any longer, set myself up at Starbucks to begin work on my thesis. With the infallible deadline of the birth of our baby looming before me, I have no choice but to apply myself and get this thing finished!! An added incentive came when my thesis supervisor informed me that I can conduct a thesis defense over conference Skype, meaning that I can still graduate with my Masters degree before P does! (he has been bugging me ALL YEAR that he will finish first). Cha ching!

Like I said before, I have been here exactly two weeks, and it wasn`t until that night (Saturday night), LAST night, that we got to spend some time together! P got home at 8:30pm from group work, and we had a date night!! This involved dinner at another hawker center downtown, and a movie - Kung Fu Panda the kaboom of doom in 3D! It was a fab movie, and 100 times better than the first one, so i recommend it fully! And today, Sunday, we even had a chance to walk around Singapore together before he went back to school! We went to the harbour for breakfast (I had promised pancakes and bacon) but the restaurant Tim and I had been to was closed (oops!). Instead we had a relaxing breakfast at a nearby cafe and strolled through Little India!


This is a picture of the Marina Bay Sands hotel, the newest monstrosity to grace Singapore`s skyline. From a structural engineering point of view, it is incredible (as I am told by P), but I can`t help but be weirded out by this and a dozen other wacky changes to Singapore since I was last living here in 2004!


Vancouver visit number 2!

I travelled home for a short interlude before moving to Singapore from France for my new niece Sadie`s baptism, a big fat Greek Easter, and a few important birthdays!

There was feasting...


an Easter egg hunt... and even a pinata!



There was a special birthday...


LOTS of hockey! and even some room for (pizza) love!


There was a sunny market day...


And lots and lots of rainy days. 


Best of all, I got to savour the Canadian westcoast...



and cuddle my nieces as much as I could!




Saturday, May 28, 2011

Last days in Fonty

Incredibly, P's second semester ended at the beginning of may. We both felt like the time had been flying by and it was hard to believe we would be packing up and moving to Singapore in a matter of days! Our last few weeks in Fontainebleau had a few fun surprises for us as well! Namely:

1. More visitors from home!! P's best friend Jordan and his friend Rowan visited Paris for a few days during their UK/France travel extravaganza! We shared some croque monsieur, wandered the Parisian streets and generally made merry! Highlights of their visit included some fabulous ice cream, and a visit to THE most touristic Greek restaurant in all of Paris, complete with broken plates, "OPA!" yelled at regular intervals, and forced Greek dancing with the enthusiastic (and bossy!) waitress ("you must dance!").



2. A trip to Brugges! P had been wanting to drive to Brugges for weeks and we finally had the chance to go! We both fell in love with this small city, with it's wandering canals and Belgian waffles on every corner!! We spent two full days wandering the city on foot and by boat and enjoyed our last road trip in little Cleo!




3. My debut as an Indian model/dancer! One of the highly ambitious partners decided to plan a wildly successful party in preparation for the upcoming "Desi week"! In order to showcase Indian dresses and dance, she roped us partners into modelling in an Indian fashion show and even dancing a choreographed dance to some popular bollywood songs! It was a week or two of hardcore rehearsing and then we were on! It was a BLAST and a smashing success! Here is a link to the song we danced to, and the video that our choreography was (loosely) based on! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2f5eJl_A5E


4. Some Canadian representation at cooking club! I decided to bite the bullet and host a cooking club to honor my favourite meal: pancakes and maple syrup! Because our kitchen is less that adequate, a friend of mine offered to lend her kitchen, and a Canadian cooking club was born!



5. We are PREGNANT! Baby E is set to arrive on or around November 29, 2011. This fun little fact made the last few weeks in Fonty the most interesting, because while I was tour-guiding, road-tripping, bollywood dancing, and cooking, I wanted to throw-up 100% of the time! Come to think of it though, I think the four previous activities that I mentioned in this post were probably the ONLY things that I accomplished in the last few weeks in fonty! When I wasn't doing these exact things, I was sleeping. And trying not to be sick.


Saying goodbye to Fontainebleau and all of our new friends was really hard :( but we were happy and exited to move on to the next phase of this year's adventures: P3 in Singapore! Au revoir, Fonty! Nee Hao, Singapore!!