Sinapore

In case you didn't know, I'm in Singapore right now, and it is absolutely amazing! The flight over was slightly unpleasant. A little inside information about me and fears. Two things in particular that scare me are tight enclosed spaces, developed as a child when siblings would hide me in the dryer during hide and go seek, or brothers who would like to wrap me up in blankets so tight that I couldn't move me arms at all and then sit on me. The other is flying. I don't like it all that much. When I really think about it my problems with flying are exlcusive to three things. Take-off, landing, and turbulence. This can be a very small percentage of the flight, but I've been on flights where it was the majority.

My first leg of the trip to get over here in Singapore was Portland to Narita which is the airport just outside of Tokyo Japan. It was over ten hours long, and thankfully there was no turbulence what so ever. It was honestly probably the most peaceful plane ride I've ever been on. When I first boarded I noticed that there was a family of four across the aisle from me. The two children were young and I was highly concerned about their ability to keep it together for 10 hours. I was really impressed they did awesome, and the youngest only broke down once and it was only for a few minutes.

I was seated next to Ivan Drago the russian boxer from the Rocky movies who killed Apollo Creed and then Rocky handed him his lunch in Rocky IV. It wasn't really Ivan Drago from the movies but I took a picture of him so you can see for yourself how much he looked like him.------------------------------------------------->

Ok you got me, not really a picture of the actual guy I sat next to but serieously the guy looked exactly like this except he was wearing a turtle neck sweater. He said 5 words the entire 10 hours, and they were either yes or no. He didn't have a decernable accent, but he could have been German, or Russian, and not have been a strong english speaker.

About 5 hours in I offered him a chocolate chip cookie so as to loosen him up a bit. I wanted to know how it felt to kill a man with your bare hands. He looked at me shook his head and gave a grunt and looked staright ahead and did nothing. He wouldn't make eye contact with me for the rest of the trip. I decided I didn't like him all that much after he kept pushing my arm off the arm rest when I was asleep.

Posted below are a few other pictures I took when I first arrived at the hotel. First; the hotel is the Ritz-Carlton and it is incredible. Second; I wish you could feel the humidity in these photos. I landed at 12:30am on Wednesday (Asia time) That is Tuesday morning for you American readers. It was 86 degrees with about 85 percent humidity. I took a bunch more last night when I got to get out and see the city some more but I haven't been able to load them onto the puter yet. I will share them later on during the trip. For now please enjoy this humble offering.

This is the view from my room. It is the downtown proper of Singapore, but really the whole city, which is also a nation, is urbanized. If you go to the Zoo in Singapore they have horses, cows, and chickens there because seeing such an animal in this place is impossible.

This is directly across the street from the hotel. It is the temporarly national stadium while they renovate the old one. The soccer field floats on the harbor. I thought that was really really cool. Also this was a very overcast day, but it was 90 degrees out that day. Its so wierd seeing that color of sky and sweating profusly.