Perfect Skin

This week I have mostly still been enjoying Indonesia's gift to the region; smoke. Loads of it in fact, and something the locals are taking advantage of by claiming respitory illness related to the smoke haze. Singaporeans are not very good at coping with any form of illness, a faint hint of a sniffle and it is quickly escalated as fever and before you know it half your team is off with fever. The opportunity for taking some time off work is spreading like wildfire, which is ironic as it is wildfire that caused it in the first place.
I was a little disturbed to receive a postcard featuring Zoe Tay a Mediacorp artiste, actually everyone to do with selling any stupid beauty or vibrating product seems to be a Mediacorp artiste. Can't say I have ever seen them, which isn't surprising as I don't listen to local radio or watch local tv. Logically as Mediacorp is owned by the government, then these people are actually public servants, but I guess it would be more difficult to sell a product promoted by Zoe Tay, Public Servant. However, that wasn't what disturbed me, what disturbed me was Zoe's secret to beautiful skin; she swallows. That is quite an interesting piece of information, but I'm not sure of the relevance to beautiful skin and wouldn't she be better rubbing it all over her face?
Singapore is a small place and I perhaps shouldn't have been surprised to once more bump in to Sandeep Highpants, who was mentioned back in January following his mean guitar session at the Crazy Elephant. As it turns Sandeep is not an accountant but a project manager and one who started working with us a few weeks ago. Funny old world innit, as is this photo taken back in January at Sandeep's performance.

Hazey Fantasey

This week I have mostly been passively smoking courtesy of the very generous Indonesian Slash and Burners who chose a particularly dry time of year to set fire to much of the small areas of virgin forest still available to them. Consequently we have been in an eye watering fog for over a week, but the Indonesian Government did apologise. There is no attempt or any plans to put them out but they would like us to forgive them.
This burning forest is also the home to one of the last pockets of orangutans in the wild, pushing us them just that little bit closer to extinction. More than likely this means we are not too far away from only ever being able to see them in a zoo, which is something I did when my mum came to town last week.
I am not a huge fan of zoos, but the Singapore one is certainly a goody and breakfast with the orangutans is one of the more interesting activities you can do there. Despite a mix up with a fairly dim cafe staff we did manage to have some quality time with a big orange monkey as well as some food, considering the opening interlude with the cafe staff the food was quite a bonus.
Regular readers of this blog, and apparently there are some, will possibly be wondering if being an expectant father has impacted my alcohol intake and silly things as a result. Possibly it has, but it has been down largely due to the absence of the usual suspects to go boozing. However this period of relative abstinence was interrupted by the recent fleeting Reevey visit that required we all head over to Bintan (in the smoke fog) to tear up the very nice Bintan Ria golf course. Three beers and a curry before the 11:00am tee off set the scene. But there were rules though, the red wine did not come out until the back nine, at from that point you could buy a mulligan for a shot of wine.
Surprisingly while my game remained consistent as one of the worst rounds ever seen on the Ria, Miles remained consistent as the best round he ever played, at least according to him. But he did win so I guess we should believe him, not even the sight of Elliott's hairy bean bag on the 17th green put him off his game, he obviously had some attention issues as a child and couldn't wait to race home to ring his dad.
However, we couldn't do that before we had a few more beers and watched some fat old sweaty expats (no not us, we were watching remember) make complete fools of themselves with some local hos. Fantastic stuff that was beaten only by another expat on the ferry home who spent most of the 45 minute journey up to his second knuckle in his nose, which he would quickly gobble up, nothing like a bit of human waste recycling.
It's very festive here right now, three festivals actually; mid autumn for the Chinese, Deepvali for the Hindus and Hari Raya for the Muslims and public holidays for everyone, hoorah. Although culturally and religiously diverse they all seem to involve lights and eating, and we have managed to get along to all of them. The Mid Autumn lantern parade at the Chinese Garden is without one of the lamest things four adults can do, but the kids seem to like it. Seeing as we didn't have any (real) kids with us we went to the pub, Rochester Park to be precise and decided it could be our new favourite pub, excluding Number 5's of course.
And because I haven't been updating this for a while, I thought I should also mention we recently stayed on our very own tropical island in Indonesia. When I say very own, I meant with 12 other people, but we were all from the same party so it was our very own. This is a spectacular place to stay, and thoroughly recommend it if you happen to be in the area. Although having experienced their fishing trips, it is unlikely you will see anything above 6 cm swimming in the water.