Hello World Lah!

Had this blog for a while and have been meaning to post to it, but you know how life is... this stuff always falls on the back burner. Well, it's time to share my life story, travels, and all things I think y'all may find interesting. Grandpa, Ma, Marik, Papa, Tanyuhsa - this is especially for you! Now you can't say you don't know what's going on with my life.

So for those of you who may have stumbled upon this randomly, I travel a lot, a whole lot, lately 80% of the time, and my family of course has some beef with not knowing where I am and what I'm doing. With time differences often being 12 or 13 hours, it's hard to keep in touch via phone. I can barely keep up with work email, so emailing everyone personalized updates, although in theory sounds responsible and wonderful, is not practical. So there.. I mean here.. that's how I got here.

Currently I am in the island, country and city of Singapore. Yup - it's all three. Pretty amazing, eh? It's an interesting city - a melting pot of a bunch of SE Asian folks, cultures, cuisines, styles and architecture.

It's also a major financial center, drawing tons of US, European and Australian companies and expats. It's one of the cleanest cities, if not the cleanest city in SE Asia and has interesting rules that most of you probably know. For those of you who don't - you cannot purchase or sell chewing gum in Singapore. You can read more about it here

Capital punishment is a legal form of punishment in Singapore, and in the mid to late 90's the city-state had the highest per-capita execution rate in the world. So you can imagine, the city is quite sterile. Possession of drugs above certain quantities yields to a mandatory death sentence.. Ouch!

Anyway, enough about stuff you can read on the wiki. I've been here quite a few times, and find this city fascinating. Singaporeans, and I fully agree with them on this point, are extremely proud of the food. The food here is amazing! In my opinion, the street food is here is especially stellar! Most of it can be found in what's called hawker centers which are basically giant outdoor food courts consisting of rows and rows of tiny stalls that sell street food. You can find almost any Asian dish - the stall options range from broad to quite specific. Some stalls sell Chinese, Indian, and broader cuisine options, while other specialize in specific dishes like fish soup, porridge, fruits, etc.. you name it - you can probably find it at a hawker center.

















After 7pm, some of the streets close down for Satay (BBQ on sticks- chicken, beef, prawns, etc etc.. ) The reason this is done after 7PM is simply because it's too hot to fire up the grills before dusk.

































Well, I don't want to make your mouth water too much... Plus I need to get moving on wrapping up my work for the day so I can head to Kota Kinabalu for the weekend.

Cheers!

P.S. for thos of your curios about the Lah in the title, it's what's called "Singlish"