Law, Partially

How great does five weeks in Singapore sound? So exciting, traveling to faraway lands, trying new foods, going new places, meeting new people. It does sound pretty good, and maybe someday we will go on such a five week adventure. Since we arrived on March 3 in Singapore, Christine has been working, and I've been sharing nanny duties with Bobby's grandparents. Christine's parents live in the suburbs, so when you exit the front door, it doesn't exactly look like this: view of downtown Singapore from offshore These three towers of Marina Bay Sands have become the most recognizable image of Singapore. Unfortunately, their image does a disservice to foreigners who may be curious about Singapore. Inside the towers are a luxury hotel, luxury restaurants, and a casino. It's really designed for super rich foreigners. Although I'm not a super rich foreigner, I could be there with a 45 minute train and bus ride. Alas, I am not likely to do that. There are a lot of

Bobby's Singaporean grandparents often call him Kai Kai (pronounce like k-eye, rhymes with my), and I recently realized that a panda at the Singapore Zoo also goes by the handle Kai Kai. In fact, they even share the same Chinese character: 凯. Kai means victory, by the way. Bobby's Chinese name is Ze Kai (泽凯). Kai Kai the boy and Kai Kai the panda share some similarities. If you want to find out more, Kai Kai the panda's homepage can be found here: http://pandas.riversafari.com.sg/kai-kai.html. Kai Kai's hobbies apparently include napping and eating bamboo. Kai Kai the boy's hobbies include drinking milk and twisting his body around. He doesn't seem to like napping much anymore, although he sure seems to be happy when he wakes up from them. Kai Kai the panda munching on some bamboo. Kai Kai the boy looking a bit panda-like -- or at least the closest I could find. The photo was taken earlier in the month.

We are all fooling ourselves when we deem some cultural aspects as "authentic." Actually, sometimes they are not really authentic as much as they are just really old and most everyone has forgotten their foreign origins. Who wouldn't dream of having an authentic and delicious pizza made in a Neapolitan cafe? Neapolitans invented pizza, but the ingredients don't originate locally: wheat comes originally from Turkey, tomatoes come originally from Mexico, and the list goes on. But who can remember? Some have criticized Singapore for not having an "authentic" culture because it's merely an amalgamation of foreign cultures: Chinese, Indian, Malay, and European. The Malays were here first but received Islam from Arab conquerors. The Chinese and Indians largely came in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as laborers. You would be hard pressed to find in China many so-called Chinese dishes served in Singapore -- except maybe at a Singaporean or Malaysian r

Where my baby boy once expressed his curiosity by staring, he now expresses curiosity by making full body contortions to motor to the place where he is not and wants to be. Bobby can't crawl yet, but he can roll and spin himself in circles while lying on his belly (see  Curly Shuffle ). He seems frustrated that he cannot crawl yet. In the meantime he is turning into a ball of kinetic energy, especially when it is time to go to bed. We worked hard to make Bobby a good sleeper, and now we're frustrated because we have taken several steps backward. For his first two months, we rocked him until he slept, then woke up with him in the middle of the night to do it again for as many times as he needed. Eventually, we started to let him cry for a while before we picked him up and soothed him. When we left Chicago for Singapore, Bobby was five months old and was a champion at falling asleep at nap time or bed time. During months three and four, he would sometimes cry for a little while

Singapore is indeed a tropical island. It is hot and humid every day, where a temperature of 80 deg F provides a respite from the outdoor sauna and you always wish for a breeze. There is no autumn where trees shed their leaves, and there is no winter when no flora grow. The 365 day growing season contributes to a surprisingly green landscape. Flowers, trees, and grasses line roadways. A mango tree grows in the neighbor's yard, and Mr. Chen plucks the mangoes for the neighbor. He says the neighbor is too lazy to pluck, but I'm not sure if that's the case. It may be that in Singapore labor is cheap so you wouldn't think to perform such tasks yourself when it is so cheap to hire out. No doubt if you don't harvest the mangoes they will fall onto the expensive cars parked below. But who will harvest the mangoes? Plucking mangoes with a custom plucking stick. He fashioned the stick with a fish net on the end of two taped together bamboo poles used as bars for han

On Sunday, Christine, Bobby, and I knocked back a few pints at 3rd Culture Brewing Co. First, a little back story. Back in the old days (2009-2012), it wasn't that easy to get a good pint of craft beer in Singapore. Certain restaurants catering to Western expatriates may have had some imports, but by design, these restaurants are expensive. Back in my student days, I wasn't going to spend much time at such places. I mostly hung out in the coffee shops and hawker centers drinking the local brew, Tiger. Tiger is not bad, and it is cool and refreshing on a hot day or night. But in the US we are spoiled for beer choice, and it may be hard to live in a mono-beer culture when you've grown used to a culture where craft beer proliferates, with each sip tastier than the last. Well, craft beer is coming to Singapore. There are now a number of microbreweries around (there was only one -- that I knew about -- when I was a student here). Proper restaurants may still, of course, offe

Saturday was full of Singapore wedding activities -- lunch and tea ceremony in the afternoon, wedding dinner and marriage registration in the evening. The tea ceremony and lunch were held at the Chen's house. The registration and the dinner were held at a Chinese restaurant on the thirty-third floor of a skyscraper downtown. In from Penang were Eileen's parents and sisters, brothers-in-law, nieces, and nephews. Mr. Chen's sister came from Ipoh, and Mr. Chen's brother and his family from Kuala Lumpur. The rest of the Chen's are living in Singapore. As for Mrs. Chen's family, I didn't get to meet any of them. I had already met Mr. Chen's brothers and sisters several times before, and I'm friends with some of them. Everyone was excited to meet the first born of the new generation. Bobby doesn't have any cousins yet on the Chen side of the family. I've been to several Chinese weddings now, and I've got a routine for meeting extended friends

Archive.org had a few of my old blog posts from Truespies.org. I published them below at the dates they were originally published, in 2008 and 2009 (from my Ethiopia and NUS days). I have some more Truespies.org blog posts saved in Word documents on a hard drive in Iowa (more from my Ethiopia days and from my Singaporean professional days). Someday maybe I will try to pull those onto this Blogger site. I was saving in Word because in Ethiopia I had only intermittent access to the Internet, so I wrote in Word and copied to the website once I got access to the Web. Alas, some blog entries will be gone forever because I didn't always write in Word.

The timing of our Asian trip was meant to correspond with the wedding of Wei Hao, Christine's brother. He is marrying a girl from Penang, Malaysia, who now lives in Singapore. Her family remains in Penang. Hence, last weekend we went to Penang for a wedding, and this weekend there will be another wedding in Singapore. This also means Bobby, not yet 6 months old, now has his third set of passport stamps (entering/exiting Singapore, entering/exiting Malaysia, entering Singapore again). Quick history of Penang Penang, you may recall from when Christine and I visited in 2011, is an island off the west coast of Malaysia, with a city, Georgetown, founded by the British. The early history of Georgetown is similar to that of Singapore: port cities from the English empire, distinctive Straits colonial architecture, majority Chinese, prosperous and modern due their being entrepôts. After Singapore's independence from Malaysia in 1965, however, their trajectories began to diverge. S