It has been a hectic week and a half.  I taught seven financial education classes to the community during Military Saves week, we visited Kuala Lumpur for four days, we are still unpacking from the move into our new house, we are going to Vietnam in a few days, and the car battery died. 

In other words, a perfect time to squeeze in a visit to the United States Embassy in Singapore.

I admit that I do not hold United States embassies and consulates in high regard and do so with scant evidence: 

1. I saw Missing in 1982 and remember that they lied to Jack Lemmon when he was searching for his son in Chile, who disappeared when Pinochet took over and murdered all of the leftists.
2. It is rumored that the State Department only hires lawyers from Top 5 law schools.
3. In the waiting room of the consulate, ex-pats pass the time by telling horror stories of being treated with contempt by U.S. consulate and immigration personnel throughout the world.

But I had to visit.  In eleven months we have plowed through the pages in our passports, leaving only a few pages remaining for immigration stamps and visas.  Until last week, when our daughter snuck the passports off to her bedroom and wrote in one of them with a pen. 

She made very nice little boxes and triangles, carefully positioned inside the lines.  A very good imitation of the official  immigration stamps that left Elysia with only one blank page in her passport.

After dropping Citrus off at preschool I raced to the Embassy yesterday only to find that they would not let me submit my wife’s passport even though her signature on the form matched the one in her passport.  I needed to get a letter of authorization, something that is not required when you are in the States.  A bureaucratic roadblock that required an extra round-trip and US$35 in cab fares.

Back at her office, Elysia drafted a letter authorizing me to drop off the passport, authorizing them to add pages to the passport, authorizing me to pick up the passport.

We were tempted to add “P.S.  Please stop buying all of the canned corn.”

Embassy staff shop at our small Navy Exchange and on the weekend there is a small parade of shopping carts unloading into the ice chests in their cars.  Canned tomato paste disappears and it can be months before a new shipment comes in.  In the States, addicts try to buy bags full of decongestants to turn into meth.  Here, they had to put signs at the cash register announcing a limit on cheese purchases.

I will not say that it bothers me to not be able to find regular sugar for months at a small store meant for active duty military personnel and those directly supporting military missions.  Or that even disabled veterans in the United States are not allowed to shop at the Navy Exchange on base, let alone other agency personnel.  The truth is I mind because I am too lazy to shuck my own corn and I want to buy Ben and Jerry’s for US$4.50 instead of US$8 at Singapore grocery stores.

I visited the Embassy again today to drop off Elysia’s passport and will be back tomorrow to pick it up.  As I left, I swear that I saw consulate staff eating tomato paste by the spoonful, right out of the can.  That’s how they are.

I know what you are thinking and you are absolutely right:

Jack Lemmon never had a chance.

The Chingay Parade, “Asia’s Grandest Street & Floats Parade,” was two weeks ago and I have been culling through 300 photos.  I think about fifteen of them are worth viewing, a major disappointment even though I do not think there is a way to truly capture the spectacle of 7,000 performers and fifteen floats moving along a portion of the Formula 1 track.

Five of about 27 dragons dancing through clouds of smoke from firecrackers.

I have never been to Mardi Gras or Brazil’s Carnival but this was the clean and controlled family version.  It was planned and carried out with perfection.  Hundreds of volunteers whose sole job as “motivators” was to stand outside the entry gates to welcome and cheer people as they arrived.  Not a scrap of garbage on the ground.  The most polite energetic audience you have ever seen, including a couple busloads of Navy families.

Chingay culminated with a crowd sing-a-long called “Let Us Celebrate, We Are One”.  A very Hands Across America-like song except that it was preceded by about 27 dragons dancing through a cloud of firecracker smoke, followed by close to fifty lions and fifteen floats celebrating everything from the Lion City, Harmony in Diversity, families, Star Wars, and public housing.  Yes, public housing.  It was surreal. 

I see a river flowing
Moving past the boundaries
And crossing lands
Linking people as one
* * *
And with friends and family
Passion and harmony
A parade for everyone
A parade for everyone
Let us celebrate
Cos We are One

About 85 percent of Singaporeans live in public housing!

A parade for everyone / People's hearts together as one / Let us celebrate /Cos We, we are One

Vader's Fist, 501st Legion. But of course.

Naturally, of the 300 photos I took these were the ones in focus.  A few others may be seen by clicking HERE or on one of the photos.  Next year I will bring my tripod so that I do not have blurry pictures of 7,000 costumed performers and dancers.  If you want to visit Singapore, I highly recommend February 11 and 12, 2011.

Hello Kitty backpack

Citrus and I head to the airport early tomorrow morning for a very short father-daughter trek.  We are flying one hour north of Singapore to Kuala Lumpur.

Elysia just wrapped up four days of work in Malaysia so we will meet up with her in the capital for an extended weekend vacation.  No real plans other than to explore the city.  I borrowed a book of walking tours from our local library and hopefully Elysia will feel up to it. 

She sprained her ankle the previous week in Bangkok.  You know, parachuting out of an airplane as part of a joint operations exercise with the Royal Thai Navy.  Either that or she missed a step when boarding a shuttle van.  She leads a life of mystery and adventure.

My daughter and I are packing light, carrying only her new Hello Kitty roller backpack for our clothes and my camera bag.  As always, traveling with Citrus means that it is much easier to have casual conversations with people we meet along the way.  Everyone loves to chat with her, and they put up with me.

After all, imagine me without my daughter.  A 41-year-old white male trekking around Southeast Asia wearing a Hello Kitty backpack. Not a pretty picture.

We will be back in Singapore on Sunday and, for the first time in several weeks, Elysia will not be going to another country for work.  After all, in the last five weeks she visited Brunei, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia. 

That is enough travel for work.  We leave at the end of next week for a 10-day trip to Vietnam.

Each dumpling has 18 folds.

A day in downtown Singapore at the start of the Chinese New Year:

After our most recent visit to the doctor for a prenatal exam, we cut through a high-end shopping mall to get to the restaurant with very good soup dumplings.

Turning the corner we heard drums and cymbals and watched two lions, each going into a store to bring good luck and fortune for the new year.

If I were a lion I would especially appreciate soup dumplings.  However, most eat lettuce or sometimes fruit.

To bring good luck and fortune to BCBGMAXAZRIA the lion walked all around the store, into each dressing room and behind the cash register.

The River Hongbau festival also had anamusement park with mostly the insane kind of rides that only hurtle you in loops.  After an evening of eating Sichuan food there was just no way that I was going to hang upside down locked in a cage.  Again.

Once again, the experience of a festival in Singapore is a very clean and controlled environment.  The last two fairs we visited — the Montgomery County Fair in Maryland and the Tennessee State Fair in Nashville — each had wholesome elements such as 4-H livestock competitions but there is always an element of seediness to be found.  Ex-cons running the carnival games and rides games run by former Deadheads who lost their way in search of a magic ticket.  In other words, my friends. 

Years ago I was taking a lunchtime walk through Washington Square Park in New York City with a friend and, from the distance, a somewhat bedraggled man began to approach us.  Instinctively, we veered away until he called out “Mitja!”. 

It was ________, whom I last saw in Berkeley four years earlier after he missed a court appearance and I found him sleeping in his closet. 

Me:  Long time no see!  Where have you been, _______?

________:  Oh man, I followed the Dead for a while and then my foot got run over by a ferris wheel in Kansas.

But of course.  You never know when a ferris wheel will roll by and catch you off-guard.  Very sneaky.

At the River Hongbau festival everything was, of course, very clean.  No garbage on the sidewalk, everyone behaving well, ferris wheels up-to-code and fully anchored.  After Giuliani became mayor of New York City many people complained that he turned Times Square into the corporate and retail environment of Disneyland but people here would probably not see that as a bad thing.  In fact, I am surprised the Lion City does not have animal-costumed tourist ambassadors frolicking around the city.

After her experience riding Space Mountain at Hong Kong Disneyland I was not so sure that my daughter would trust me when it came to thrill rides, or any ride.  But she did not hesitate when she saw the giant plastic bubbles floating on a pool of water with kids rolling around inside.

She sat calmly inside as the bubble was inflated around her and then spent about ten minutes falling all over the place, loving it.  I was just glad she did not pee in there like the child of another military family.  It is against the law to not flush a public toilet so I am sure they do not appreciate a wetting down of their giant hamster liberty balls.

We visited the River Hongbau festival on the Singapore waterfront two weeks ago, one of many celebrations at the start of the lunar new year. 

This year’s theme was a mouthful: 

Welcoming the Year of the Tiger through promotion of Chengdu to enhance the offering of River Hongbao in Singapore and promote close ties and collaboration between Singapore and Chengdu City.

Perhaps the Chinese version is shorter. 

Chengdu is the capital of China’s Sichuan province.  There were demonstrations of local arts and crafts but I was mainly interested in the food.  I should not have been surprised to find that almost everything tasted like it was on fire and I suspect that in Sichuan a meal is not considered satisfactory unless at least two dishes are dripping with hot chili oil. 

Marinating lotus root, mushrooms and chicken feet.

Luckily, I love spicy food.  I also like non-spicy food.  I will try just about anything and loaded up on meal tickets to sample the hot sesame balls and the fresh pancakes, sweet or salty, that are folded in half and contain a pork filling.  Only the chicken foot in the middle of the vegetables stopped me.  I have tried them and they do nothing for me.  I suppose they do even less now for the chicken.

Sugar decorating demonstration

We enjoyed the fireworks and view of the Singapore skyline with other Navy friends.  Before we left for the night I went to buy a panda puppet with my leftover vouchers.  As I was fumbling with the money two photographers pushed me aside in order to get a good shot of a visiting politician.  It turns out I was within two feet of Teo Chee Hean, who is Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister. 

He currently holds two Cabinet positions in Singapore, but tonight he simply held a stuffed panda toy.

Click HERE for more photos.

Today we received a package at our Fleet Post Office (FPO) Box containing all of the mail sent to our old address in Maryland.  Somewhere along the way they let gorillas jump up and down or rested a cargo container on it.

Priority mail, 17 pounds.  It flew from Columbia, Maryland to San Francisco where it boarded a United Airlines flight to Singapore as part of the Military Postal Service.

 At one point someone made a feeble effort and covered a six inch hole in the side with Priority Mail tape but ignored that the top was almost completely ripped open around two of the sides and you could see , through a 2.5-inch gap, our mail sliding around.

And to think it only cost us $45.05 in postage.

Our daughter's first crush

For the past two weeks Citrus has had a crush on a boy in her preschool.  An older boy, perhaps already five. 

Every night she is excited about the idea of seeing him the next day although her attempts to talk or play with him are usually thwarted.  Sadly for her, he usually plays with the other boys. 

She was excited to learn a few days ago that he said he would marry her but only after he married one or two other classmates first:  Hannah with the straight hair (also known as straight Hannah) and Hana with the curly hair.

On the phone the other day she told her grandmother the great news.  

Mima (Grandma), I already choose my husband!  I already choose Danzel!  I choose Danzel to be my husband today.  But Danzel said he would marry straight Hannah first, then me. 

Yeah, and I like him a lot.  Because he is always looking nice and I always think his hair is beautiful.  Yeah, and he looks nice and it looks to me, Sweet.  And that makes me like shout his name when I want him to play with me when it’s playtime and sit next to me. 

But one day, when I wanted to sit next to him in the Chinese room where the tables are, [another boy] which has green Crocs, he stole my chair.  Yeah.

Just for the record, I will not be the kind of parent who pulls out a video camera when a date comes over to pick her up.  Really.  That happened to me once so my daughter will be spared as tempting as it may be.

To celebrate the end of the New Year festivities my daughter’s class made tang yuan, or glutinous rice balls.  All of the preschoolers rolled the colored paste into little piles of balls which were then whisked away to the school canteen for cooking in a light syrup with pandan leaves or ginger. 

This was a recipe that everyone enjoyed making but the children’s reviews were generally short and blunt:  Chewy and disgusting.  Not exactly the hallmarks of family unity and completeness that the dumplings symbolize. So much for tradition!

Playing around while waiting for the tang yuan to cook.

Grandmother and granddaughter making glutinous rice balls for the New Year.

Citrus making tang yuan.

Pink and white glutinous rice balls

I have been “married to the military” for ten years and we have moved seven times.  Nine times when you include the two inter-city moves into larger digs.  So far we have been relatively lucky and have not had too much break or disappear.  No horror stories that other military families have of the cargo container being dropped into the sea.  Only a few scratches, a broken tablespoon, a missing box fan, the occasional lamp crammed into a box half its size.

Unless we intentionally get rid of it, it’s all coming with us.

This is what I am thinking as I unpack dozens of boxes.  I am also wondering:

What items belonging to your spouse or partner would you break if you could lie successfully and blame it on the movers?

Hypothetically speaking, of course.  My wife is on travel and nothing has broken.  Yet.