Hello, Singapore! Aka, yes, I will happily travel for 24 hours at a time.

Well, here I am in Singapore! In case you missed it, I am in the process of moving out of Hotel California in New York and into an as-yet-unknown sublet, also in New York, and in the meantime I am taking a vacation! Itinerary includes home basing it in Singapore with Cheryl for a couple weeks while taking weekend trips to Bali and Taipei, and then jetting to Melbourne for about a week and a half to check out Australia with my friend Mark! Home again on December 15th, after a more-than-24-hour layover in Honolulu (hahaha how terrible, right? :p). Basically, I am psyched. I've been to 48 United States and 4 Canadian provinces/territories, but never been abroad!

I left from JFK on Monday evening. I flew Singapore Airlines - 8 hours to Frankfurt for a two hour layover, and then back on the same plane for the 12 hour leg to SG. The plane was big and new and had personal tv screens with almost 300 free movie options. For the first leg I was surrounded by empty seats. There were four free and pretty darn delicious meals total, so I didn't even have to eat many of the snacks I brought along, and they came with free wine! Singapore Airlines = a champ. I also just like being in transit to begin with. When I'm in between places, I feel out of time. Not responsible for anything or worried about anything. Just in between, suspended. As Stew said in "Tomorrow Gone," "there is a stillness in motion that transcends the stationary." That speaks right to my heart.

So I finally watched Guardians of the Galaxy, Belle, Captain America: Winter Soldier, and Maleficent (and thoroughly enjoyed all of them); finished a couple books; did the sudoku and the crossword; enjoyed my meals; and towards the end squeezed in about 6 hours of sleep, so that when we landed in Singapore at 7 am I would be just waking up and hopefully minimizing jet lag!

So basically I love traveling internationally, and I haven't even done anything in another country yet :p

Anyway, once I landed, customs took like one second and I caught a cab to Cheryl's school, where she'd left her apartment key and MRT (subway) card for me, and then I took the quick subway ride back to her place. I saw a bit of freeway-side Singapore on the cab ride, and it was beautiful. Lots of palm trees, which I'm used to as a Californian, but surrounded by really intense greenery thanks to tropical climate. Weird to see the palm trees and the greenery together! The buildings by the road looked newish and very geometric, like they were made of lots of little rectangles and squares all puzzled together, and a lot of them had colorful squares or stripes of paint accenting the white walls, too.

Now I've showered and decompresssed a bit in Cheryl's apartment, and said hello to her cats, and I'm about to wander her neighborhood - she's immediately outside Little India. After I find some lunch, I'll probably wander farther! But be back around 5, so I can meet her for dinner when she gets home :)