No Raffe's!

It's been awhile

Sorry its been so long since a post has gone up.  We have been quite busy.


My trip to Germany went well.  It was a very long week for all of us.  Halie fared well and was great for John.  I was mentally drained when I returned as it was a completely solid week of meetings. John was drained as well from taking care of everything on this end. The good news was that I only worked 3 days this week as I took Thurs/Fri off for Thanksgiving.

Dannette is doing well.  For those that are curious, we never heard anything back about the movie audition although everyone was supposed to receive a phone call.  I think follow through might not be so good on that end but Dannette seems unphased.  In school news, we went to tour Singapore American School on Tuesday and it is exactly as we had imagined.  A very large (3800+ students) American school that houses preschool through high school on 38 acres of land on the north end of the island.  It is picturesque and the facilities are top of the line.  After seeing it, Dannette is certain that she would like to transfer in January so the paperwork has begun.  She will finish at the Canadian school at Winter Break and begin at SAS on January 10th.

Work has been steadily getting busier and I am in the process of planning my travel for next year.  January is starting to be booked as I will have 2-3 trips during the month.  The first will be to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia at the beginning of January.  Assuming the dates stay the same, John and the kids will be accompanying me as Dannette will still be off school.  Mid-month I am off to Hong Kong for a few days and then it will either be the last week of January or first week of February for South Africa.

Halie and John are doing great.  They have enrolled in a Gymboree class this week and Halie spent most of her time pointing and grunting at the other kids. We need to work on her waving skills :)

We are all getting excited for our vacation to Bali at the end of the month.  Xmas decor has started to appear everywhere here and Orchard Rd is now lit for the season.  I am hoping to get down there this weekend to capture the lights on film.

Our Thanksgiving dinner was a hit with everyone.  We tried a different restaurant that is along the Riverfront called Brewerkz.  It is famed as Singapore's only micro-brew.  They were serving a Thanksgiving buffet, complete with turkey, ham, roast beef and all of the accompanying side dishes.  We all enjoyed it a great deal. Halie loved the turkey best of all and had to be cut off near the end as she started falling asleep at the table while still holding onto some turkey.

Can't wait for Black Friday online shopping in a few hours. It will be 2pm here so much easier than waiting up until midnight! I have to get through my two hour Mandarin lesson first!  We have all begun our lessons and finding them challenging but enjoyable. Though I can't say much yet we are really focused on the tones.  Tone is critical in Mandarin as the same word, Ma, can mean mother or horse!!!!!

That's all for now, I hope you all see this after feasting on your Thanksgiving dinners before the food coma sets in.  Love to everyone!

Helping the World a little bit at a time

As some of you who know me well, I enjoy finding ways to be more resource conscious and do my part in being environmentally friendly.
I have been curious over the past few days, I keep thinking about the ecological impact that our relocation is having.  I mainly think about this when I am sitting on a bus to and from work thinking about how nice and comfy my car was back home to zip to and from work.
In all seriousness though, I got curious and decided to calculate our family's carbon footprint for one year based on our lifestyle in the US and compare it to our new lifestyle here.  It was quite eye opening!

To be fair, not everything can be calculated so I am not advocating this is perfect but I think it gives a good visualization to how much has changed!

According to carbonfootprint.com, our family of 4 had a carbon footprint of 45.19 metric tons per year!!!!! This takes into account our energy usage based on our household bills, our recycling efforts, our views on organic and local produce as well as our vehicles.

Contrast that to today where according to carbonfootprint.com our same family of 4 now creates only 13.56 metric tons per year. Quite an improvement by any standards.  In fact, according to this calculator we still surpass the country-wide average of 12.2 metric tons. Unfortunately, we do harm our score by preferring to buy products like our meats, dairy and cheeses from imported locations like Australia and the US versus the more local Chinese, Singapore and Malaysian sources but we prefer to be confident in the food standards. Our complex also seems to not believe in recycling and thus we have had to resort to treating our recyclables as trash.  Hopefully that will improve soon.

I guess I can rest assured now when I board that bus each day or jump on the MRT to get somewhere I truly am making less of an impact on the world while we are here!

In other news, today was a big day here.....We received word that Dannette has been accepted for the spring semester to begin in January at the Singapore American School!  This was quite unexpected as we had been told that the list for 7th grade was quite extensive.  As we have yet to visit the school , we will hold off on making any final decisions until I return from Germany and we can go tour the facilities.  Dannette is very excited and seems optimistic that she will choose to change schools. 
In other Dannette news, she learned of an upcoming television movie here in Singapore that is casting for the lead role this week.  She is going to audition tomorrow at the production company after I get off work.  The company has received a grant to film a sort of "after school special" that will air next year on one of the local channels.  The role Dannette is auditioning for is that of a 11-14 year old expat who loves Singapore but is a bit quirky and bullied by a local Singaporean. She is quite excited and has spent the evening studying the script and practicing for her on camera audition tomorrow.  Who would have thought that she would come all the way to Singapore and get the chance to do something like this? Fingers crossed that she does well and has an experience of a lifetime auditioning for the cameras!

That's about all for now. As a side note, with the time change this past weekend we are now 14 hours AHEAD of the US.

A nice long holiday weekend - Deepavali

We have come to the end of a very nice long holiday weekend.  We were able to enjoy our first of many public holidays here - Deepavali.  It is the Hindu Festival of Lights. From where we are staying you wouldn't really know there was a holiday with the exception of a few people in traditional Hindu garb and the cable television station was offering free Indian television for the week.  There is an area of the city called Little India that was bathed in light.  Here's a sample.  Maybe next year we will go down and explore.

 I wanted to share a few AMAZING  photos that John took this week of the rainstorms that we have here.  Obviously on the 32nd floor we have quite the view of the city but our view of the storms as they roll in is like nothing I have ever seen.  We are entering the rainy season here so I am sure we will get to enjoy them often.

This coming week will likely go quite quickly as they all seem to.  This week especially so, as I am heading to Germany for a week next Saturday evening.  Part of my time in Germany is for an annual department meeting and the other part is to continue training with 

 some others that do the same job as me but in other parts of the world.  I am looking forward to learning more about the role and meeting some of my peers......dreading leaving the girls and John behind. I will have to have John step in as guest blogger for me while I am away.  This means WARNING:  think twice before assuming anything you read while I am away is serious.  Likely it will be full of jokes!

Master Bedroom

Terrace off the Living Area

Dannette's Room

Enjoy the photos and keep the requests coming.  It can get difficult to come up with topics so I promise to do my best to fulfill your requests.
One request that has repeatedly rolled in is to see pictures of our home now that our things have arrived and we have made it "ours". So to meet the requests, here are a few shots of the house now that the furniture is in and we are settled.  I will have to include Halie's room at a later time as she was already in bed before I remembered I needed to get a picture of her room.

View from the North windows of our Master

Dining Area looking towards the Kitchen

As one final treat, I am including a new video that John made.  As you can imagine, our entertainment has become more limited here so we have to find new things to keep us busy.  I love John's new hobby of photos and videography.  I think you will enjoy this first movie that he created. Please note: to get the full effect watch it when you can turn on the sound. It is set to music and the sounds of Halie.

A New Found Obsession.......Yami

Natural Yami with Fruity Pebbles

They say that Singapore is the cross-roads of flavor with so many exciting cuisines available.  As you know from prior posts, we have not been loving the local food as much as we had been told we would.

That has started to turn around, at least on the sweet side of life.  In came Yami Yogurt. 

It all started for me one day at work when I saw a few of the admins eating out of these small styrofoam containers with tiny neon green spoons.  I inquired about it and one of them quickly ran to the freezer to hand me an extra cup they had picked up and were saving in the freezer.  Within a few bites, I quickly knew that this was something I wanted to enjoy.

You see its not like the frozen yogurts or ice cream we have back in the States.  The yogurt is closer to the texture of firm soft serve ice cream but not sweet, in fact the mildest of the flavours (natural) tastes similar to the tartness of plain yogurt.  They also serve peach, guava and mango flavors each becoming successively more tart.  Once selected, you then move on to what I think makes Yami Yogurt so special.......the toppings!

Toppings are an artform. You can choose from a mutitude of tiny diced pieces of fresh fruits like kiwi, strawberry or watermelon or move to something more adventurous like wheat germ, granola, sunflower seeds right on to Fruity Pebbles!

I introduced Dannette to Yami about two weeks ago and we have since been back twice for her to enjoy.  This past Sunday John was with us and got his first taste of Yami.  He also was quick to agree that Yami is really good.  We each have our favorites and are enjoying the chance to mix and match flavors.

Not a very exciting post but wanted to be sure to recognize Yami as the first food in Singapore that we all agreed on!  Yami fever must be catching as I just looked around and see they even have a Facebook page with over eight thousand fans.