Finding the Silver Lining

Today was a day that had some negatives that ended up turning into positives. Read on.

When i woke up I was delighted to find that it was a good 10 degrees (F) cooler than yesterday. I took a nice cold shower anyways and headed off to work. It was a nice walk today. I ate some grapes along the way. I got right into my work organizing all fo the exploration data to break into zones to run the pile analysis. I was the first one into the office. Most people seem to get in around 830 and then leave around 6 or 630. I'd rather come in at 730 and leave more around 530 so that's what i'm going to do.

At 1030 I had to leave to go downtown to get my work visa finalized. I took a cab ride over and used the 10 minutes to myself to think about things. I've been feeling really disconnected from the world. I'm trying to reconnect by stopping myself to think about things and acknowledge things more. If i don't force myself to do that I find that i just keep going going going with my tunnel vision.

The building downtown was a gorgeous building right next to a riverwalk similar to san antonio. I took a few photos from inside of the building. There is a really cool building across the street with all of the awnings painted different colors. Singapore is very densely populated and is very urban, but they've been able to incorporate so much green space and landscaping that it doesnt feel like a city life at all. It's so lush and green. I'm sure it means big maintenance costs for the country, but it really makes the entire environment very livable.

I picked up my visa paperwork and headed back to the office. Some random thoughts on the way back. The majority of the population in the area that i'm living in (Bishan Park area) appears to be asain families. Aside from the Drunken hat wearer- i haven't seen many young people. I find myself most places I go to be the only caucasian person. The people here seem generally very reserved. I don't see much emotion, like laughing or yelling or displays of affection. Most people around here seem to live in these high rise condos that are all over the place. The look like las vegas hotels without all the flashing lights. In addition, I rarely see any advertisements or billboards. There are advertisements on the buses, but that's about it. There are food places on every corner and lucky for me they all have picture menus :) That's all i can think of right now regarding my random observations.

Today for lunch we went to an Indian place right around the corner from the office. I had some really good spicy rice and potatoes and a vegetable prata which is kind of likey a pancake. towards the end of lunch it started to rain really really hard and we had to run back to the office, although only 2 blocks away, i got completely drenched. so sitting in the aircon i was freezing!! but luckily Haneena got me a cool Fugro polo to change for my soaked shirt so it turned out great. i really like this polo its a women's and navy blue with some grey accents i really like it. They have some really cool orange field supply bags here they said i could have one before i left.

During lunch i asked the girls if they ever go to lunch with the others. they said no not really. tis funny because for whatever reason the onshore and offshore people all over fugro don't seem to want to associate with each other hahaha. the offshore people work right next to us and they never talk to us. well i talk to them but they don't seem to interact with my group much. there's a few dutch guys in the offshore group and the rest local imports. my group seems pretty small, maybe about 8 people i think. 2 senior PM's and the rest staff level. There's one CAD person, and then the big lab crew I think they are thier own activity center though. on thier server it shows only about 10 projects for 2009 so it looks like they move from one bigger project to the next. the server is set up similarly to FWI so it's really easy to find things. No GIS department here, but they use the same programs as FWI so i'm not having any trouble. Actually its been really very easy to jump into this project.

I met with my supervisor in the afternoon and she led me in another direction regarding the pile zoning. i started making a contour map and finished that up and then i'll overlay with a hand shaded map. the program only allows one contour on each map. we were supposed to go to the fitness place after work but we had to leave by 6PM and the others weren't ready to leave. So i was disappointed but oh well i'll just go myself tomorrow. On the way home i took the wrong but and ended up at the metro terminal, which turned out to be ok becuase i found this really cool restaurant that had all kinds of different breads. i got a few different kinds and had that for dinner as i tried to find my way home. I got on another bus home and i got lost again so i just got off and took a taxi home hahaha. It was a good mini tour of the area i guess!!!

When i got home (finally) i just grabbed my computer and headed back out to a starbucks nearby to use thier internet. we still don't have good internet at the house and it doesnt look like that's going to change unless i pay for it myself which i'm very tempted to do. we'll see i'll decide this weekend. i think we might go to malaysia so that could be really fun. if not i'm sure we will have plenty of exploring here. i saw a commercial (the bus had tv) for a Mulan movie coming out next week that looks really good. It looks like it will have english subtitles (i hope).

All in all things are going well. i'm hoping to sit down this weekend and start planning out the things i want to do/see while i'm here and then i will feel a little less aimless. today i got an email from my friend doug from FWI. he sent me a whole list of things to do here in singapore and malaysia which was so awesome of him. there is a big overnight party coming up in december at a big dance club called the Zoukout (www.zoukout.com) that looks like so much fun i'm definitely going. he recommended a bunch of other places i'll have to check out too. so much to do so little time! Joelle wants to go to vietnam so maybe we will take a flight. I'm trying to avoid too much travel around christmas and new year but it might just end up that way. Next Friday we have a holiday, i'm not sure for what, but maybe we will do some travel then.