It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas

We are now only two weeks away from Christmas and I think it is finally starting to feel a bit more like the holidays.  Shopping for our gifts is in full swing and the live Christmas tree arrived today!  Just having the smell of the Christmas tree helps make things feel a bit more spirited. Shopping for gifts takes significantly more time and effort as we are not familiar with the shops. Even simple things can be baffling and more complicated.  Take for example this evening when we went out to dinner we decided it was a good idea to pick up wrapping paper, tape and twine (more on the twine in a minute). Wrapping paper had to be purchased at Watsons, which is like CVS or Walgreens but only non-medication related items so cosmetics, basic household items etc.  They however sell gift wrap but not tape.  That of course would be sold at the bookstore!  Oddly enough bookstores here also double as a sort of stationary store so this is where you have to buy tape, binders, pens and pencils.
Now to the twine.  Store number three to get three items. The twine was necessary as after I spent several days searching stores for ornament hooks, someone finally took pity on me and explained that they don't sell ornament hooks in Singapore! Apparently here you use twine or string to hand tie a loop on each ornament to hang from the tree!  If anyone has pity for us, please snag some ornament hooks after Christmas and save them for me.  I will fly back with them in July when we come to visit so that we have them for next year.  Luckily, our wonderful helper Cecilia is tying each of the ornaments now so that we can decorate the tree tomorrow.

We are hoping that tomorrow is decently clear as we hope to get to the beach. We are in the rainy season currently so its been difficult to be sure that we can make outdoor plans as many days wind up being overcast for a large part of the day and then end in a huge downpour. Our back up plan is to finish the Christmas shopping.

Finally, I had another day off this past Friday and John and I took Halie to meet Santa.  You might be interested to know that although there are hundreds of malls in Singapore they don't have Santa!  I actually had to do some online research  to locate the one mall in Singapore that has a Santa in the basement for you to visit.  The line was nonexistent as you could only visit with Santa if you purchased a photo package. Halie did well at the outset and was quite curious to see him.  After a bit though she decided he was bit odd and tears ensued.  She rallied though and we got several nice photos.  No smiles as she was too serious being on his lap but I think the one we chose is adorable.  We hope you enjoy!

Living Life in Singapore

We have now officially been in Singapore for over two months and the routines are starting to set in.  Riding the bus, calling cabs and lugging groceries home from the market have started to feel normal. The Xmas shopping has begun and we are all looking forward to our upcoming holidays and vacation.
Dannette continues to enjoy school.  This past week her basketball team won their game and Dannette was able to compete in her first swim meet.  She competed in three events, 25m breast stroke, 100m freestyle relay and a 25m back stroke. She did quite well and even took 2nd place in the 25m back stroke!

Work has  gotten extremely busy lately. Its probably not more work than can be achieved, its just being compressed into only 3-4 days per week as I have been taking each Friday off to use my vacation time. In January I will be headed to Malaysia for two days the week of the 10th and Hong Kong for three days the week of the 24th. Luckily, these are short trips with flights of no more than three hours so they should seem easy.  In between trips we also have our first visitors coming for three days.

Life at home has recently gotten easier as we have now hired our full time helper. Her name is Cecilia and she is from the Phillippines. She joined us on Saturday.  It will certainly take some take some getting used to as John and I consider ourselves to be quite independent.  Thus, having someone hold an umbrella over my head when its drizzling or chase after us to clean up as we eat off a plate is a little different.  As John tells me today, we are going to have to get used to "lazing it up a bit". The benefits though of having someone here to help take care of the basic household chores so we can enjoy our experience here will be worth it.
I heard that Chicago got snow, I kind of miss it.  Not the whole winter of snow, just that first snow fall when everything is so perfect. Hope everyone is well.  Talk soon!

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.