Category: learning

Don’t Forget Your Tissue Pack

According to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a towel is the most “massively useful” thing you can bring along when you are traveling.

I suppose that covers all of the galaxy except that unique corner of the universe known as Singapore.

In Singapore, the tissue pack is king.

You see, the restaurants in Singapore don’t provide napkins and the bathrooms don’t have paper towels.

So every true Singaporean keeps a small pack of tissue handy in pocket or purse because some of the best food available involves getting your hands pretty dirty.

But the humble tissue pack is more than just a clean up device. It’s a calling card, perhaps better described as a place holder.

In the many Hawker Centers in Singapore serving up fabulous street food, things can get pretty busy, especially at lunchtime. There are usually a lot of tables, but they fill up quickly.

The best way to hold an open table while you order up your food is to lay a tissue pack on the table or seat.

I’m totally serious.

There is a social contract amongst the people of Singapore that says if a table has a tissue pack laying on it, that table is reserved. And everyone honors this.

No one simply pushes the tissue pack away and sits down. The tissue pack carries clout.

I was told that the tissue pack hold can last for at least a half hour or possibly longer.

And then once you get your heaping plate of chilli crab you settle into your saved seat and dig in to crack claws and legs and extract every savory morsel. The tissues are there to help you clean up.

Tissue packs are relatively cheap if you buy them in a drug store, like five cents a pack, but so valuable that it’ll run you up to a Sing Dollar (about .80 US) if you forgot your pack and have to buy one there at the Hawker Center.

It’s best not to show up unprepared.

Oh yes, in Singapore the most massively useful thing is a good clean supply of tissue packs.






Image from the Musings on Communication blog.



I’m Not Alone

So it was on flight SQ16 from Incheon to San Francisco that I picked up a new friend.

Maybe friend is too generous a word.

A follower? Stalker? Shadow?

I think it all started somewhere over the international date line. It gets pretty wonky up there over the Pacific.

When I got off the plane, there was someone there. With me. Only I didn’t realize just who yet.

Tuesday, as I went to work, he came along.

I say he. Really, this thing is a genderless entity, a spectre, an imaginary friend. But for the sake of ease, I’ll say he.

As I commuted to work, I finally realized he was there. In the passenger seat. He went with me into the coffee shop. He was there when I parallel parked my car. He took a seat in the conference room where I’m attending a training class.

He sits next to me. With me. On me. On my head. Wrapped around me like a blanket made of wet mud and peat moss.

The entity is jet lag. I call him JG for short.

I think you’re not supposed to talk about JG. When someone asks, the right answer is “fine! Oh I’m doing great. Yeah, no problem.”

But it’s a problem.

JG is real and JG is profound. I try to stay normal. I try to make a salient point during the workshop on data security but while I speak, JG puts cotton fluff and jello into the working parts of my brain.

JG gives me a nice outfit to wear to work, only the fabric is the leaden material found in xray rooms and dentist offices.

My shoes are made of concrete.

I lean forward and my shoulders slump so I can carry the heavy load. I straighten up again and pretend JG isn’t there. My shoulders slump once more.

JG won’t be ignored.

I turn in early to bed to try to get right, to reclaim my brain and my body and I drop easily into sleep. JG jostles me awake at 2:00 am and says “hey! Let’s play!”

I rise and have a snack and try to get something done so my day isn’t a total loss but JG robs my motivation and steals my creative will.

Instead I sit on the couch watching “Mad About You” reruns and wondering where in the hell my life has gone since Paul and Jamie examined married life in the ’90’s.

Then I hallucinate about being stuck in customs somewhere in Asia.

I shake my head from side to side to clear my etch-a-sketch of a mind and try again to focus on the television. Maybe some more food will help.

There isn’t a pill that can cure me of JG. There isn’t a quick fix remedy.

There is only time.

JG and I will be hanging out for a while. You’ll find us in aisle 6 at the grocery store. I’ll be the one standing there bewildered and trying desperately to remember what I needed to buy.

JG will be the one playing tricks in my eyes and tripping me at the ankles and making me want to lay down on the stack of ten pound bags of jasmine rice and close my eyes, just for a moment.

Until strange dreams startle me awake and I rise again to wander the world, a little lost American girl searching for another cup of Singaporean coffee (kopi) and a slice of kaya toast.








Image found on Anabolic Minds.



I’m an alien. I’m a legal alien.

I’m a New Mexican in Singapore.

What a whirlwind visit I’ve had here in Southeast Asia.

I think I’ve lived a year in a week and on Sunday, my last day in residence, I have a lot of thoughts going through my mind.

I have had some of the best food of my life. I have sweated more than I thought my pores were capable of. I’ve felt more at home than anywhere I’ve visited. I’ve felt more alien than anywhere I’ve ever visited.

I’m not sure where to even begin speaking about it all and rest assured over the next weeks and months it will slowly come through my writing. Or, perhaps, even years. My mind and Muse need to ruminate over it all.

But let’s get down to basics.

After eight days and twelve thousand miles away from home, I need some Mexican food.

On Friday as I visited with my ex-pat friend now living in Bali, we agreed that Mexican is just one thing you don’t get here. You can find just about everything else, but Mexican is a no.

While shopping the enormous Mustafa Market in the Little India district of Singapore (it truly is a store where you can find anything), I happened to stumble across this:




While Old El Paso is my least favorite brand, it’s at least something, right? Salsa! Here! Yes!

Only.

No.

Turn over the jar and you see this:





Made in Spain? For General Mills Switzerland?

Remember that old Pace commercial: “New York City!?! Get a rope…”

Yeah. Times a thousand.

I shan’t be sampling the Spain/Swiss salsa. I’ll simply have to enjoy another day of chili crab, delicious laksa, chicken rice and everything else wonderful here and then next week I’ll see about getting my chile meter back up to green.



Eek! A Monster!

Oh, but it’s such a cute little cross eyed monster.**





Look at him all rawr with all the nose holes and the rectangular mouth.

I just want to pat his little growling head and feed him raw meat. Yes I do.

I suppose I should actually find a way to tame this little beast because he’s about to climb into my backpack so we can board an airplane.

That’s right folks, Oh Fair New Mexico is set to hit the road. Or rather, fly the skies.

This time we’re going *international*.

Whew! Very exciting times!

I’m a embarrassed to admit that in my little life, the only times I’ve been out of the US was the many occasions dancing back and forth across the border in both Juarez and Matamoros.

And of course, I spend every day at work calling every country code you can think of. I travel the globe via telephone lines, but when I was hired this was to be a non-traveling position. Ah well.

I’ve had a passport for decades and even had to renew it. But I’ve never, not once gotten that bad boy stamped.

Well that’s about to change. The Boss Man and the Big Boss Man have seen fit to put a ticket in my hand and a Bon Voyage banner across my tuchus.

Next week, I’m headed to Singapore. I’m going for work but I’m as excited as though I was having a vacation.

The Good Man was able to rearrange his schedule to come along so it should be big fun (when I’m not suffering the slings and arrows of my employer).

Actually, the work part of the trip should be fascinating too. I’m attending an event put on by one of our biggest suppliers. They are bringing local in-country reps from each of their offices across Asia. So people from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, India, China, and so on are flying in to meet…well…me.

My company gives their company a lot of money, and I will be the senior representative in attendance, and oh I also run the entire program (i.e. I control the money) so I guess I’m worth meeting? Weird. Really, very weird.

I suppose if I’m the one in charge (a concept that should worry you endlessly) then I’d better behave myself.

That’s going to be really, really difficult.

Geez, I even went out and bought professional clothes for this event (I work in Silicon Valley, “professional clothes” is a concept no one cares about).

I am alternately nervous and so freaking excited I can hardly contain myself.

There! I’m going to be there!! Yesss!





**In case my little monster is unfamiliar to you, it’s a universal power adapter.

Singapore image found in seveal places across the web. If it’s yours, please do let me know and I’m more than happy to either take it down or give you credit.



Misspelled, in Any Language

Ok, I gotta vent out a beef I have with the internet.

While it’s a wild and wonderful place, it’s also hell on the English language.

Ok, let me step back, I do enjoy a good LOL Speak as much as the next guy.

But that’s all in jest, right? I like to torture the English language once in a while myself. I love words and putting them together in different ways and seeing what happens.

I can make fun of the language because I respect it so much.

Here’s the cranky part…over the past week, I’ve seen five, yes honestly five different misapplications of the word voilà.

Now, someone might quibble with me that the word voilà is French and not English so what’s the big deal? Who cares if it gets misued?

I do.

Like avant-guarde, bon voyage, cul-de-sac, critique, and faux pas before it, the word voilà has been adopted into the English language.

And so when I see it spelled wah la, walla, wall ah, waalaa, whala and other variations, I end up grinding my back molars into dust.*

I don’t know why, of all the poor grammar and misspellings out there in the wild web, this one bothers me so much. But it does.

So for those who wish to use the word voilà but can’t seem to sort the spelling and that little accent thing over the a, might I suggest the following internet meme words for your use:

Bam
Badabing!
Blammo
Bazinga
(ok, moving out of b expressions….)
Shazam
Ta-da
Zoiks

And many others. Or hell, make something up. I respect something made up so much more than a gross misspelling of an innocent word.

Suffer the little letters, come unto correctly spelled words.






*A phrase liberally borrowed from my rock star cousin and used without his permission