Safe!

Anybody who is old enough to drive a car is familiar with this feeling: you are going to an expected destination but you have never been there before. Trying to find a friend's new house, maybe, or on your way to an important meeting. Riding down the highway, looking for an exit you know should come any minute, hoping the directions are good because you don't want to be late. All in one moment you recognize the landmark, make the turn, and relax.

On Tuesday Imola and I each received job offers, and today the Ministry of Manpower approved the visa request, so we are definitely staying in Singapore for the foreseeable future. The lucky company is a well-known language school in Asia, so we will be fighting the good fight against poor grammar and helping "L" finally triumph over "R." Imola will be starting first, as early as Monday morning she will have her first face-to-face class with a small group of Korean youths. The clearly communicated request of the poor students' mothers is: bury them in homework. God bless them, but that is what she will do. Can you imagine what would happen in America if parents were to find out that a pencil and paper, properly applied, can be just as effective a babysitter as a television? Our test scores would improve so much that we might even get our credit rating back.

To celebrate, on Wednesday we went to a touristic gem of Singapore - Underwater World and its sister attraction, the Pink Dolphin Show. The pictures and videos below pretty much convey the feeling, but it was absolutely stunning in person. OK, the dolphin show was kind of dusty (from a showbiz perspective) but the aquarium definitely made up for it. We got to pet a Leopard Ray, there were tons of exotic fish and other marine life, and the underwater conveyor belt tunnel through the shark tank. Greatness!

Our quality of life has also been enhanced by our first visit to the local DVD rental shop in our neighborhood. This is a privately run business which is cool with renting discs to foreigners who don't yet have their visa papers processed. Because we have lots of time to kill, we have been renting a disc a day all week. Beyond Rangoon was good, Prison Break season 2 has been a disappointment so far, and everybody needs to rent The US vs. John Lennon. This is a documentary about John's influence on the Peace movement, which I highly recommend (the film and the movement). Another good timewaster this week is the mobile phone game Disco which I just found on the Nokia that we bought when we first got here. Basically, you are the manager of Dr. Groove's disco and you have to make money, attract guests, keep them in a good mood, upgrade the disco's sound and lighting systems, advertise the club, and book the DJs. You even get to hire the girls who dance in cages! It certainly must be the most entertaining game under 70 Kb that I have ever played.

The food remains excellent, although we frequently see somebody at another table eating some delicious-looking dish that we have no idea how or where to order. We are stuck with the picture menu, our only options being "dry or soup" and "chili, no chili." "Dry or soup" refers to the fact that if you order, let's say, beef and noodles, the chef can put them on a plate with a bit of sauce, or he can throw them in a bowl with a bit of sauce and a cup of boiling water. Both ways are good. Later on this morning (I am writing this at 3:45 a.m. because I usually sleep until 11:00 a.m. every day) we are meeting up with local friend Michelle to go have a meal. One topic of conversation will definitely be Mandarin food-ordering techniques. For those who don't know, Michelle is the superstar who picked us up at the airport when we arrived, took us to our new apartment, signed our rental agreement and even fronted our first month's rent and deposit. All because we met her and her friends for drinks in Budapest one year ago.

To close this post, I want to send a message to all readers of this blog who are considering taking a major new direction in their lives. We prepared for nearly a year to make this transition happen, we saved our money and waited patiently for what seemed to be the best time to go. When everything was uncertain, we trusted our plan and enjoyed the events of each day. Now that the waiting is over, we have to go back to a daily working schedule but we absolutely could not be happier that we have the next two years or more to do all of the things we were dreaming about: travel through South East Asia, save money for our future, play host to our family and friends who want to visit us, and become locals in a strange land.

Dear reader, Welcome to Singapore!