Random thoughts

Thailand really is a beautiful place. This was my second visit and you really can't beat it for clear water, white-sand beaches, friendly faces and good food. We had an awesome and relaxing four day trip (all for about £150 each!!). It's great to be able to take weekend breaks to places like this, I think we'll be checking out some more Thai islands before long. Sometimes when I'm lying on a beach reading my book, I just can't get over how lucky I feel right now - no I'm not gloating, just recognising my good fortune. Come and visit us and we can take you to a tropical island for the weekend too. I think that pictures can do this place more justice than words, so here we go. Left: one of the many lovely long-tailed boats, resting in the crystal clear waters. Right:Us at sunset. Below: Maya bay, where the film 'The Beach' was shot Wow, what a great four days. Just a shame that we had to come back to work really...

Wow, these things are great. What a magnificent idea! We were at a braai/BBQ yesterday with some new friends and they produced a boxed of mixed flavour mini cornettos. I think I might just have to install some of them in my freezer. They are big enough to satisfy a dessert/ice cream urge, but not big enough to make you feel guilty... perfect. A friend that we met at the wedding in Malaysia introduced us to a really great group yesterday, all couples from SA, Oz and the UK, and all about our age. I think this group could be a lot of fun. They've invited me to a gathering on Tuesday afternoon (it's a public holiday here). I'm looking forward to it.

My friend Julia posted this on her blog and I think it's a great idea. It shows where you've been in the world. I will try and update this as we travel more around Asia. Still, it only equates to 11% of the world (26 countries), and I'm not really sure if Hong Kong counts as China. create your own visited countries map And here's my map of the USA, only 17% (9 states so far) create your own visited states map

Is anyone out there? If you are reading this and fancy leaving a comment, please do. I'm not sure if the system works, as I haven't received any yet. Give it a go, I'd love to hear from you.

At the end of September we went to the mid-Autumn festival lantern extravaganza at Chinese Gardens (near where we used to live) - we went to this last year and it was quite something, hundreds of satin sculptures brightly lit. This year was a little disappointing (apparently they'd outsourced it). There were very few satin thingys and there was some dire karaoke going on in an oversized marquee with no-one in it. That said, it was still quite amusing. I've put some photos on here. For photos of last year's see our website http://www.paulandcaillie.com/ (select 2005, Singapore). Mooncakes The mid Autumn festival is also the time to give and receive mooncakes. These look like pork pies but have a variety of sweet or savoury fillings. These mooncakes often have a whole cooked egg yolk inside to symbolise the moon. The festival falls on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month, is also known as the Mooncake or Lantern Festival. Several interesting legends are connected with this...

Batu Pahat We were at a Chinese wedding on Sunday in a town called Batu Pahat in the Johor Province in western Malaysia. The town is little known by tourists, hence a group of four caucasians strolling down the road in our wedding smartest elicited several honks of car horns. Cake cutting As the bride and groom entered (Elaine looked gorgeous in traditional Chinese wedding attire) they first stood for photos whilst pretending to cut a fake cake - apparently the Chinese aren't too keen on cake, but it's still a tradition. The couple then poured a blue beverage into a tower of champagne glasses, very impressive. The feast For the wedding meal itself we were surprised to find ourselves guests of honour, placed on the top table either side of the bride and groom. We were in for a real treat. It was truly a wedding feast, there were about seven courses, all of which were Chinese except for the chocolate ice cream for dessert. Some of the food I recognised, the rest I did not. I did,...

Four hours on a coach at night is a great place to think; to really contemplate stuff. And that's just what I did - instead of succumbing to the usual attractons of my book, my MP3 player or sleep, I just sat and thought. Thoughts flitting around my head like fireflies; round and round, up and down; eyes closed; lovely. Very enjoyable it was too. I came up with three new business ideas (and rejected them all). I formulated a plan for a new badminton club, which I'll start this week. I contemplated the differences between Chinese and British culture. I mulled over the importance of having good friends nearby. Then we arrived home in Singapore.

We seem to be able to see and breathe again, thank goodness. It was all quite odd. I'm glad it's pretty much gone though. We were assured by our Singaporean friends that the situation was much, much worse in 1997 - everyone had to wear face masks. This week has flown, all of my students passed their 3-weekly test, which is a relief. Even though the test results do not reflect on the teachers, I'm always glad when they all pass. I've learnt a few more Chinese characters, I find the process of learning them quite relaxing - however I don't seem to be able to remember them very well afterwards! We're off to Batu Pahat in Malaysia this Sunday for a friend's wedding. It's about three hours away and we're going up and back in a day. It should be fun, I'll post pictures when we return. We are really growing to like Singapore more and more, maybe we'll stay a little longer...as always we don't know exactly what we're doing yet or where we...

After a year here I thought I had mastered the art of understanding Singlish; until, that was, we had a talk from the second in command of Singapore prisons at church. I thought I was listening to another language. I guess what it is, is that most of our Sing friends tone down their Singlish when they talk to us and all we get is the occasional 'lah' in the middle or at the end of a sentence. This guy was in full flight Singlish mode, I was amazed. It can be quite fun to listen to, but I have to resort to lip-reading quite often because of the accent. The picture above shows a sign from Pulau Ubin, one of Singapore's islands. Singlish is basically the skeletal structure of English, with some key grammar missing and some Malay and Chinese words thrown in. It is spoken in a more abrupt manner than English is spoken. It also uses some quaint English idioms Some examples: lah - kind of like a tag question eg 'isn't it?' or 'aren't they' or even just ...

Well, I kno w I only posted this morning, but I've just found out more about the smoke. It's from southern Sumatra in Indonesia and it affects not only Singapore, but also Malaysia. The air pollution level is measured every three hours. Any measurement up to 100 is considered safe. Today's measurements have fluctuated between 100 and 150 - not good. Worst of all, it appears that a lot of the particles are small enough to get through the air con, yikes. Oh well, sounds like it's not too dangerous - I'll just have to get used to having itchy eyes. We bought a photo printer today, finally we'll get around to printing some of our wedding photos. Not bad, only a year and a half late! We witnessed what is quite a common event here in Singapore this afternoon. However, I realise that it's not really that usual anywhere else. We were at Funan - The IT Mall and there was a shop-opening event. This consisted, as all do in Singapore, of a drinks party, several talls st...

This week has been odd; I first noticed the haze last weekend when the morning sun was a lovely red colour. Since then the haze has ceased to be 'lovely' and more of an annoyance. It's like standing next to a really smoky bonfire for a week - and apparently it's set to continue for another few weeks. Evidently there's some slash-and-burn clearing going on in Indonesia and Singapore gets the smoke from there every year or so. This is the first time we've experienced it - and it's not nice. We've even resorted to turning our air-conditioning on...something we've never done in Singapore. It's quite surreal, it's like a smelly mist that won't lift. We've had friends here this week, it's been nice to come home and chill out with friends from the UK. It feels really good to be able to just pick up where we left off with them, and it's really good to have the space to put people up now. After Alpha last night we were walking back a...