December 2007 - My New Home

Degrees Celsius

Who are the people in your neighborhood? I spent this week in Singapore getting acquainted with my new surroundings. Contrary to my original beliefs, I actually like Orchard Road, especially at night and especially during the Christmas Season. It is not like Naperville as much as a cross between London, the Champs Elysees and Ginza. Marks and Spencer, Takashimaya and Boarders on the corner, every expensive shop Paris would frequent and a Starbucks on every block. When Gloria Estefan warns that the ‘rhythm is going to get you,’ watch out for that Asian shopping bug instead.

My new apartment has 2 flat screen TV’s, 2 DVDs, 6 remote controls, over 100 stations, but no alarm clock or radio. So my first purchase was an iPod clock radio. My apartment has no dishwasher too, but on my second day I realized I do have one and her name might be Ling Ling. She comes everyday to clean my apartment and it makes me nuts! Feng shui uses a lot of items placed on angles. I’m more of an orthogonal girl (i.e. anal retentive) so when I walk in from work, my first five minutes are spent straightening the items in my apartment. Sunday is now the only day of the week that I have to make my bed.

Getting acquainted with my new kitchen was dangerous. My oven is the size of a microwave oven, and it is a microwave oven too. I go to make a pizza, trying to set the dial to 400, but it only went so far, so I figured it was warming up. Then it starts making a sound like a microwave. I walk away for a while and start to smell something burning. I stopped the oven, thinking I microwaved the pizza, opened the door to take the rack with the pizza out, and burnt the bejesus out of my fingers. 400 degrees Celsius = over 752 degrees Fahrenheit . The oven did not go that high, but it was on the hottest setting. I will not have fingerprints for a while.

My washer is also a dryer. I still have not figured this one out either, because my clothes are still wet and it baked my undies.

Thursday I went to dinner at a restaurant where the waiters started dancing on tables and breaking plates on the ground. Friday I ate Rudolph (venison) atop a revolving restaurant with a view of fireworks to kick off the Christmas Season. Saturday I walked to the Botanical Gardens where the Orchids are located, soon to become my new running route.

I am making friends quickly here. The Aussies are really nice. Many people I have met while interviewing at the local gyms are also road bike riders, so I have started riding with the ANZA cycling team. This is the Australia/New Zealand team that does group rides in Singapore. It feels much safer to travel in a peloton rather than alone and it is a great way to meet people. This morning I rode with the Rat Pack and we were riding on an expressway. Good motivation to keep up with the group. Later in the morning I attended some other instructor's classes, ballet with Kayla to help with my Pilates and Bellydancing with Jessie to get me to Bollywood!

Since I do not have a car, I have been pooling home with people from the Lonza jobsite and my estimator, Jen. Lonza is the site in construction next door which Genentech plans to buy after one full run of Avastin. The HR girl from Lonza is living in my building, but she will be leaving at the end of the month. One of the Lonza superintendents lives in my old Chinatown neighborhood, so I hitch home with him once a week to go to my Yoga class with Ruberman, the Indian Guru who can put himself in any compromising positions.

November 2007 -

Phish Phood

This week in Asia, I almost lost a nipple, was chased by irate monkeys and may have eaten dog instead of Turkey this Thanksgiving.

I had only been here a week before making my first doctor’s visit. This is why you don’t ride a bike in hot pants! I was on a nearby Indonesian Island for the weekend, not widely inhabited, very hot and humid. With no athletic gear with me, I thought flip flops and the hot pants bathing suit from a previous story would perfect biking attire….NOT.

As the rear tire slid from underneath me taking a corner, the entire right side of my body glided across the path, giving me the worst road rash I have ever encountered. My top slid down to my waist and my nipple was severed to a dangling little mosquito bite. My elbow has the deepest wound-about 1.5cm deep (I have to start thinking in the metric system now), .5 cm laceration on my ankle and baby toe (See Carl, nature tried to get rid of that 6^th toe on it’s own.), and a nice light braising across my entire thigh – little blood freckles. I must have slid in monkey poo or something.

The next day I met back in Singapore with my relocation agent who urged me to see the medic, for fear of infection and some nasty blood poising they have in SE Asia due to the humid weather not allowing for proper clotting. Nothing a little Neosporin could not have fixed back in the States.

All around the mulberry bush, monkeys chased Kelly….

Outside of Kuala Lumpur there is a wonderful excursion called the Batu Caves. After climbing over 250 stairs there is an amazing Hindu shrine built into the limestone caves, overlooking the city of KL. There is a giant gold statue of a Hindu God, alters and figurines built into the caves. It is also inhabited by a tribe of monkeys. Mean monkeys - the kind that steal your young and sell them to the gypsies for bananas.

At first glance they seem harmless. They are cute little animals, not much bigger than a squirrel, with fingers and faces that resemble human babies. Some of the Malaysian children may be mistaken as monkeys. One is eating a coconut, one is trying to get the last few sips from a can of beer, one is on a gate ready to pee on un-expecting bystanders, and another is playing with a plastic bag as if it is a toy (how come monkeys never suffocate from plastic bags over their heads?)

If you try to photograph them, they show teeth. If you try to talk monkey-talk with them they squeal back and show their teeth. If you show your teeth back, they WILL chase you. The blond girl finds this out the hard way. Not only by one monkey, but his friends join in to chase me from all directions, as I am screaming and running in circles. Then I realize what I did wrong. One of the friends goes over to comfort the monkey I had the confrontation with, by giving her a friendly monkey hump – probably to show me I was imposing on his territory.

On my way out I meet an Indian man with an iguana in a cage that he has named Godzilla.

“You should put those monkeys in the cage instead!” I mention to him

“No, non, no, we are in their world. The caves were here for them first.” <Insert accent of Apu from the Simpsons here.>

I want to be a Bollywood Dancer!

Now that I have moved to my new home at Newton’s circus, Little India is just walking distance away. I love Indian food and I suppose after enough visits to Little India, I will be ready for the real thing. My engineers have recommended some fabulous curry restaurants to me, one of which I frequent because I love to watch their Bollywood movies!

Every good Bollywood film must have the following:

1.) A beautiful star & starlette that are sexually-charged, but can not even as much as kiss on screen.

2.) A family of bystanders that can break into dance on a moments notice in the background.

3.) Some dance moves stolen from Michael Jackson’s Thriller video, except they are clad in Saris instead of wearing zombie outfits. Brittney Spears, Prince and Paula Abdul’s dance moves are widely plagiarized as well.

4.) A slow beach scene where the star will ride up on a white horse singing a love song to his beloved, who is obviously a virgin. As he gets closer, the camera angles will spin as they embrace, but will NEVER show any sex.

While I watch the Bollywood films, my muscles twich as I do buttox pinchies to the beat of the sitar. I want to break into dance with them. This also happens whenever an 80’s song that my pompom squad practiced a gazillion times comes on the radio and my muscle memory knows the exact beat in which to enter into a jump split.

So even though I do not know any of the words to my new found songs, I can do a high-pitched phonetic squeal, which only to me sounds like a Bollywood hit. One evening in Little India with a friend, I break out into dancing in the streets with my squeal, just to see if others will join in like they do in the movies. They do not. The Indian guys on the street think the white girl is crazy.

Since I have accomplished just about every goal I ever have set for myself in life, I decide to make one a little less unobtainable. I want to be a Bollywood dancer! My friend says it can never happen since I am not Indian, but the next morning I go to work and tell my Indian engineers about my new dream and they think it is a GREAT idea! Watch out Shah Rukh!

This summer I found it ironic how Paris, Nicole Richie, Lohan, and Owen can all jump start their careers with their stints in jail and rehab, while the news in Singapore was predicting the fall of Bollywood because two of their main stars could face prision charges for political activity, while a female Indian actress is being demoralized for kissing an American actor on screen. What is wrong with our pop culture?

Be Careful What You Wish For…

After setting my new dream of becoming a Bollywood dancer, Monday I came home from work to the Travel & Leisure Station’s week of India adventures. Anthony Bourdin was traveling there and eating the best delicacies. I changed the station to an Indian Soap Opera, than the next station was an Indian Idol competition that was more like Star Search. Tuesday I get invited to an Indian family’s house for dinner on Saturday night.

Wednesday I was interviewing an engineering firm for a project. As they were discussing their current projects, they informed me that they have just been awarded the Mumbai International Airport. Mumbai = Bombay. Bombay = the home to BOLLYWOOD! So of course I told them about my new dream! His response: “You want to work in Bollywood? We need to staff the project.” So my interview of him turns tables, but I am not quite yet ready for my dream.

“Talk to me in a year.” I said. “I need more practice.”

Saturday night was dinner with the Vermas, their seventeen year old son and his friend, Sandeep. The father is one of my engineers. The wife, Suma, works for the Indian embassy. The son looks like an Indian Ricky Martin, and Sandeep went to school for a year in Calgary, ya hey der. Suma made an amazing dinner, while the boys taught me everything I needed to know about Bollywood. They showed one of the newest films with cameo appearances from all the most famous stars – Om Shanti Om. It is about reincarnation and the circle of life. It was more like Saturday Night Fever with Hippies, then a Pirate scene mixed with Mesopotamia. I think they are stealing ideas from Sword Lake!

I did get inducted with my new Indian name – Kavita Keen. That is the closest Indian name to mine and it means poetry. Now I have a Fijian family and an Indian family. I finally went home around 1am.

Phish Phood

For Thanksgiving, a visiting friend and I ventured into Malaysia to go SCUBA diving. Wednesday afternoon after work, we boarded a five hour bus to Kuala Lumpur to spend the evening outside of Petrones Towers, then a bus on Thursday to Georgetown in Penang which vastly resembles Charleston, South Carolina with more Asians, then a ferry Friday morning to the Island of Langkawi.

In third world countries, there is a new theory I have discovered. It is the multiple of 1.5. Whatever amount of time they say a bus, train, or ferry is going to take, multiply it by 1.5 to get the real time.

Malaysians are notorious for burning down their rainforests. It is odd to believe that Singapore, a short causeway away, was once part of this country. In 1957, the governments made a rule that anyone on the Island of Singapore at 5:30pm will be Singaporean and all others will remain Malaysians. Entire families were torn apart due to the traffic jam that day (Taxicab driver, 2007).

So we also find out the SCUBA diving in Malaysia is not really that great on the West Coast, due to the fact that their former techniques for fishing included them exercising their skill with dynamite and blowing up the reefs. The only decent diving spot is a marine reserve.

The ocean is a welcomed relief to my bike crash wounds. For the past week, every time water or soap hits my skin, I have been in pain. In the ocean, I am floating in a gentle bed of saline solution, bubbling up the dried scabs and keeping them from itching. I can feel the healing.

My family and close friends know my two biggest fears in life. 1.) Carnival workers and 2.) the fish bitting the toes off me underwater. This is why you will never see me at the fair or swimming in water where I can not see bottom. How do I get the nerve to SCUBA dive then? Diving is different because I can see the fish and there are flippers on my feet, so unless they have a very big mouth, my toes remain. My relatively new hobby has allowed me to be brave with fish to the point that in Belize, I massaged the stomach of a 2m nurse shark.

Tropical fish are also friendly, happy looking fish as opposed to the Muskies mounted above the bars in Northern Wisconsin. They look like snakes with teeth. Tropical fish never bite people unless provoked. That is what I learned in diving courses. Well, they failed to tell me that the fish will not bite you unless you provoke them, or if you have scabs hanging off your body. As I swam into a school of pretty blue fish, they started biting at my elbow, ankles, knees, and anywhere else dead skin was hanging off my body. Asian Piranahs…they cleaned me up pretty well.

So I am back in Singapore now, ready to go back to work. Nipples do heal very fast and will reattach themselves. Happy belated Thanksgiving!

October 2007 - Miss Saigon

Miss Saigon

Vietnam – the one place where I have had more dong in my hands and pockets than anywhere in the world! My hotel bill was over fourteen million dong! That is only about $250.

The Path of Least Resistance

I learn something new everyday. In Vietnam, a mom, a dad, baby and two pigs can fit on a motorbike. Traffic flows like water, all vehicles, mostly mopeds, travel at the same speed without organization or accidents. It was almost impossible to find a break in traffic to cross streets. After observing the locals, I realized that you can not wait for a break in the traffic to cross. You just have to walk into the intersection and the traffic goes around you. As I walk into traffic without getting killed, I feel a bit like Jesus walking on water. Mopeds flow around me, barely touching me as if I had just swum into a school of fish. (Note for later: this does not happen with fish if you have scabs hanging off your body, so I am sure there are exceptions to the rules.)

My father served in Vietnam in the 1960’s. His 60th birthday is in two weeks, where I will visit him in Chicago. I am hoping to visit his old post a Long Binh, about twenty miles outside of Ho-Chi Minh City, to take photos of what it looks like today.

I met up with an acquaintance in Saigon whom I met on the plane on a prior trip to Singapore (the man who informed me of my sleep potato chip eating disorder.) He has lived in Saigon for almost ten years and told me to contact him if I ever make it there. He met me at the Continental, my hotel on the main square where the Quiet American was filmed. He took me on a walking tour of Ho Chi Minh, introducing me to some of the best roof-top bars in the city for sunset. Unfortunately, he informs me that my father’s former post is now an Industrial wasteland and there is not much left of the barracks.

That evening I indulged in Vietnamese shopping through open marketplaces, the most beautiful silk shops, and art galleries. In one day, I had a dress made to fit my measurements exactly out of the silk of my choice for US$40. This is much different from the shopping centers in Singapore and finally I can find some nice bargains. Of course I have to indulge in a $20 massage and manicure & pedicure, since all the people who do my nails in the US are Vietnamese.

The next morning I woke up early to go for a run along the Mekong River before the heat and humidity set in. The city has a very French influence in the architecture of the Opera House, train station, churches and community buildings. I have a dog friend who I named ‘Dinner.’

October 2007 - Jakarta

This week in Asia

I have a new boss. My contractor’s jack russell terrier killed a two meter python in his backyard. My move to Newton’s Circus has been confirmed for November 15^th. I explained snow to a group of the Indian engineers who were just mesmerized by the stories. Oktoberfest is partying strong in Singapore. And I was almost banned from entering Indonesia, due to the fact that I have run out of pages in my passport.

Newton’s Circus is still in the expatriate side of Singapore, however, it is off the main shopping road and the grounds, pool, and gym are resort-like. It is a brand new serviced apartment complex with architecturally obtrusive exterior and cutting-edge interiors. The complex is called Orchard-Scotts, just two blocks from the famed shopping Mecca of Orchard Avenue.

As my mother looked up on the internet, Newton’s Circus is described as a “food orgy.” It has a well-known hawker food court where my colleagues took me for my first dinner in Singapore. This is where we were flashed by an elderly, half-naked Asian man with fake Rolexes taped to his mid-section in May.

Kid in a Candy Store with the Chinese Basketball Team

Friday after work, I took off to the Airport to catch a Lufthansa flight to Jakarta that was cancelled due to ‘mechanical difficulties.’ After three hours in the airport, I was reassigned to a later Singapore Air flight, where, I am a Countess...

One of my favorite stores in the duty free area is the candy store. Here I am surrounded by my favorite European chocolates – Rochers, Milka Bars, Lindt, and Cadbury. I notice next to me an extremely odd sight. Two Asian men are towering over me. I can not help but stare since I have never seen this in person, only on TV with that Yao guy in the American NBA.

As I turn a corner there is another one, then another and another two meter plus Asian man. Am I in some sort of bizarre Ambien dream-state withdrawal or something? In a society where I am taller than most of the men, this was bizarre. I finally have to ask someone if they are all together and they are basket ball players.

The delay ends up being a good misfortune, since the setback flies me in at night with fireworks blasting around the plane during the celebration of Idul Fitri, marking the finish of a month of fasting for Ramadhan. Imagine if you combined Lent, Mardi Gras, Christmas and the Fourth of July – you would get what is going on in Indonesia this weekend.

Jakarta is a huge city and Java is the most densely populated of the islands. I have been picked up in a black SUV with tinted windows. If I did not know better, I could have accidentally flown to Baghdad with the number of people piled into trucks, waving flags and shooting fireworks out of bazooka-shaped apparatuses. I am stuck in a parade, that no one is watching, everyone is participating, but nobody is throwing any candy. Whole families are riding the streets of Jakarta on a single motorbike. Women in veils and dresses are hanging off the sides and babies are riding on their fathers’ shoulders or the handle bars. Viagra vendors line the streets.

The driver too is Muslim and celebrating the end of the fast tomorrow. Families will disappear from the streets and disperse into the countryside to their hometowns to feast with their relatives. As I read in the Straights Times this morning, people exodus from the cities. All the hired help leaves for their families and the rich are left to wipe their own butts. Ever see ‘A Day Without A Mexican’ where California falls to pieces when all the Hispanics disappear? The newspaper article said that many of the hotels in Jakarta get booked this weekend because the families can not fend for themselves without their servants, which ultimately cost $65 a month, on average, for each live-in helper.

The fireworks and parties went on through the night. When I awoke to the prayer calls on Saturday morning, the streets were desolate. It is a great weekend to explore the usually crowded, hustling and bustling third world city. The people I encounter are in the best holiday wear headed for the feast.

The Muslim religion is based from five pillars: 1.) There is one God, the almighty Mohammad. 2.) The fast for one month during Ramadan. 3.) A pilgrimage to Mecca. 4.) Oms to the poor and 5.) Prayer – like five times a day! Not only that, but loud speakers blare through the city to remind them to pray, five times a day!

The people here haven’t eaten for a month (from sunrise to sunset) and everyone is so happy in the streets, yelling ‘Hello’ as their whole family passes by on the motorcycle. Did you know a family of six can fit on a motorcycle? I made it to the old town on my walk with the old harbor lined with scooners and the Dutch town square where the buildings are rotting away and the canals are full of floating garbage. The streets are very impoverished, but there is something beautiful about the shanties I pass in the streets.

After a long stroll through the afternoon, I headed back to my hotel in a bajaj, motorcycle with three wheels and tin can around it. My room looks over three mosques. The rooftop pool is a sort of oasis in Jakarta. With the amount of 8+ earthquakes in the area lately, I wonder how safe this top-heavy structure really is?

Hanging with the Dutch James Bond

The wonderful thing about traveling by yourself is that you are invited into situations that would not normally offer themselves if you were with a companion. As I lay by the pool with the nannieless families, the only other Caucasian I have seen besides looking in the mirror this morning, plants himself next to me with a pleasant, “Hello, how are you today?”

As I leave the pool, he pipes up to introduce himself and break the ice. His name is Hans, he is Dutch and works in the oil business. He is not married, because the Dutch do not marry anymore, but has a live-in girl friend and eight year old son with her. He seems harmless, so I stay a while longer, happy to have met someone else who speaks English.

He invited me to join him and a business associate, Stephen the Aussie, for dinner this evening. I accept and meet them in the lobby for a drink prior to heading out to Jakarta at night. They both seem very reputable and we have all exchanged business cards and had wonderful conversation.

Unfortunately, when all the hired help leaves Jakarta, all the restaurants close down too. We are stuck back at the hotel to spend the rest of the evening with a few bottles of wine meeting my new friends. Some how, this turns into an impromptu job interview, as the two of them are launching a new business together, providing oil platforms and storage for petrol for companies around the world. They are traveling from Jakarta, to KL, then to Malta, then Moscow and back to Malaysia and Jakarta again, all this month.

I am hesitant to get involved in their venture, knowing nothing about oil, except how to fill up my car at Shell.

“Neither one of us knew anything about oil either when we got involved. It is just like any other business, it is all about making relationships and fostering them through time.” Stephen was formerly in the mining business and Hans was a Dutch spy. What does a Dutch spy spy on? This question unleashes a series of made for Hollywood stories that I am amazed with and could write a story on his stories alone.

As a soldier, Hans has been shot through the air 30m (almost a hundred feet), covered in others blood and body parts from a mine explosion which caused him not sleep for a good five weeks. During this time of insomnia he explains that the body releases adrenaline and hormones that make the brain acutely aware. He could sense the movement of insects around him and became more in tune with nature. During this bout with sleeplessness, he became addicted to morphine and suffered the withdrawals to end the dependence, which landed him into a mindset that the Dutch CIA profiles to be a spy.

Unlike the FBI agent I went on a date with a couple years ago, Dutch spies are more than happy to share their experiences with strangers. Regardless, even with the exciting stories, I have enough respect for myself not to fall into James Bond’s traps to get a girl into bed. Stephen is leaving for Perth in the morning and we all agree to meet for breakfast to see him off. While I am sleeping, Hans is up all night, tragically bothered by the American girl that ignored his advances and spent the night performing background checks on me.

So I am back in Singapore now, back to the grind. Next week, maybe Saigon if I can get passport pages and a Vietnamese Visa.

September 2007

Where in the World is Kelly?

In the past 3 weeks I have been from Singapore to SF to Nashville to Charleston to Chicago back to SF, weekend in Yosemite, back on a plane to Singapore, then to Phuket, Thailand last weekend, back to Singapore, fly out to San Francisco tomorrow and fly to Mexico, Puerto Vallarta, on Friday. Total hours in the air this month = approximately 75.

In Nashville I visited my friend Samantha. We had time for a nice dinner in her new home and lunch on the Vanderbuilt campus. Her neighbor took me on a fantastic bike ride through the Nashville country side, past Minnie Pearl’s old home, the CEO of Shoney's mansion, and many country music stars’ homes that I did not recognize the names. It is a beautiful area! Sam is still recovering from knee reconstructive surgery.

Charleston too was astounding and I will now stop making fun of people in the south for their accents and relations to siblings. I was very impressed with the culture in the colonial town. Even my taxi cab driver back to the airport, Billy Bob, was reading a book on Islam. His views on religion were quite enlightening and I was happy to experience people in the Bible belt who accepted different views on life.

My purpose for going to Charleston was to see the other half of the building in construction. They are building the process manufacturing skids for the project in a former gas sphere warehouse, along a river near Charleston. They will put this half of the building onto a barge, then into a container ship at the port, and sail it through the Panama Canal next February all the way to Asia.

Phuck-et

This weekend I went to Phuket (pronounced poo-ket, not f*&k-it), Thailand for a little break and to inquire about a wrinkle treatment I read about on the internet called FPL. Fluorescence-Intense Pulse Light is an anti-aging wrinkle removal technique that produces results without any need for surgery, anesthetic and with no side effects. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

When I met with the dermatologist, I was happy to find out that my wrinkles are not from aging, but from a muscular contraction caused by smiling too much throughout my life. Not a bad problem, right? Well, the down side is that the only known treatment for it currently is Botox. I never thought I would become a Botox patient, but after traveling so far to find my fountain of youth, and for a quarter of the price as in the US, I gave it a try and let a Thai woman inject my face with Botulism.

Botox was not my only reason for escaping to Thailand for the weekend. We rode over 30 miles on a mountain bike to Patong Beach and went sea kayaking through the limestone islands off the coast, all the way to James Bond Island, where Goldfinger was filmed back in 1974. Craig was with me on this trip and we got some much needed rest and relaxation for the weekend on the beach.

Head Hunters

Last night we did a tour of the Asian Civilizations Museum in Singapore by a woman who is also an architect and once worked for Genentech. They moved here from Berkeley a year ago and her husband in the head financier for the National University in Singapore. She spends her time as a dossier at the museum and taught us about the mélange of cultures represented here in Singapore, from the head hunters to modern business men. They have an amazing collection of silks, jewelry, swords and human skulls. It is fascinating how the Chinese, Indian, Middle Eastern and European countries are all represented in one country. Even more fascinating is that Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, etc. can all live in peace on one little 40-mile island.

Que Pasa

Upon my return to SSF, I spent 20 hours at home before departing for a trip to Puerta Vallarta, Mexico for a board meeting for the SF chapter of the International Society of Pharmaceutical Engineers, ISPE. It is a great group of people that I have been working with over the past ten years on numerous committees to network and educate people in the biotech industry. We do a Board of Directors retreat each year to help plan the next year's events, while bonding over tequila and tacos. Unfortunately, this year I did not make friends with a Playboy Bunny to hang with our group, similar to two years ago in Cabo where most the men in the group were appreciative of my personal networking skills.

July/August 2007

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