Random thoughts

I know, I know, it's been a while since I wrote, but life has got very busy recently. We currently have our friend Al French staying with us, he's moving to Hong Kong for a year and he's on a work trip here right now. It's great to see him again, and as always with good friends, it's as if we just saw him last week (in reality the last time we saw him was at our wedding last year). Anyway, as I said, we have been busy. What with Mandarin, Alpha, work and a trip to Malacca I don't seem to have had a free moment in the last three weeks. Malacca was great, it was good to leave Singapore for the weekend. The only downer was returning home to find that our debit card had been skimmed and we'd had money stolen...oh well, it looks like we'll get it back. Malacca had awesome food and it was a fun city to spend a couple of days in. This week I had an interesting experience, I was invited by my friend ZeNee to go to the final results show of Singapore Idol (the ...

It's funny how sometimes it can just be a totally normal weekend (or weekday for that ma tter), and you turn around and say - I just love being where I am right now. We were floatin g about in our pool at 10pm yesterday with a bottle of good red wine, and that precise thought came to me. Paul had cooked me a fantastic dinner (and lunch for that matter) and I'd spent the day playing badminton, reading my book in time to finish it for bookclub, and swimming. That was when I thought just how much I love exactly where I am right now! (The picture on the right is the front of our condo). I had a chat with a friend who is starting her first teaching job tomorrow, and she's (understandably) as nervous as I was three months ago. And I reflected, it's amazing how quickly you get used to doing something so dramatically different. My friend SMS'd me today with a very good question (answers on a postcard please!) - why do people often put and 's' onto heaven (thus makin...

I'm really enjoying Mandarin classes now. It's great to be learning a new language again. I finally feel that I'm 'getting it'. I just learned how to say 'I'm English' and 'Where are you from?' - a long way from fluent but a good start. The lessons are entirely in Mandarin and are really useful for helping me improve the way I teach English. Fantastic news this week, my friends Sue and Justin are having a baby. I'm so excited for them. It makes me want to be back in the UK. I miss our friends there. Life in Singapore is getting more exciting. I have badminton this Saturday, Mandarin every Wednesday, bookclub next Tuesday and we're off to Malaka next weekend. If we don't watch ourselves we'll be as busy as we were in London. I guess that wouldn't be such a bad thing. I've finally told a few people that this blog exists, so maybe it's getting read now. I'm conscious that I don't want to change the way I've be...