Pura vida, baby!: Good morning, Singapore.

Good morning, Singapore. I got up this very early this morning from a peculiar dream. I recall running through a dingy open-air car park, hounded by large muscled dogs left and right nipping at my waist and fingers. I moved quickly with slight tinges of fear and anger at the uncomfortableness of my situation. I get to a fence, and open a small gate. The dogs, caught up with each others' excitement, chase each other out the gate in front and away from me. I cross the fence and head the other direction still feeling inclined to 'get away' or 'go someplace.' I see an old house-mate, Richard Barrett, who seemed somewhat to be in the same predicament as mine, except he is on a superbly enormous and magnificent brown horse. He has a passenger, who alights and walks with me to our unknown destination, while Richard rides of ahead of us, leaving me with my all-too-familiar sentiments of "Why didn't you give me a lift?" followed by "It doesn't matter, I'd rather walk than ask for your help anyway."

So I awoke at 4am this morning and unsuccessfully tried to get back to sleep. Instead of laying there wide-eyed and awake a moment longer, I decided to meditate. Last night I fell asleep on the couch and missed evening meditation with Amber. When I got up and crawled into bed, she was still in meditation. I went straight to bed. So this was making up for it. Looked at my watch - 4:48am. Later when I checked again, 5:58am. I have never sat through an entire sitting for over an hour without fidgeting, so I was astounded to find that 70 minutes had passed without me having to change my position.

Anyway, I realize it has been a long while since I've last blogged. So much has happened and gone by in such a blur that now it's seems like such an insignificant memory. I will not relate everything that I feel stands out, but I will give these a mention+photos, as they seem salient in my mind and memory.

Amber, with that big cheesy grin, looks like the
newest addition in the cast of Avenue Q! :}

Dinner before Avenue Q at Wyndham Theatre.

Big Ben

London Eye lost much of its appeal when I found out
about the Singapore Flyer.

Charlotte, Brendan with baby who we stayed
with in Walthamstow, London

Westminster Chapel

Regents Park social, London

It's been a week since Amber and I landed in Singapore, and although I have been feeling like my round-the-world adventure has come to an end, I have to constantly remind myself that it is not so for Amber. In fact, she has expressed, and I have remarkably seen in her eyes, the befuddlement of culture shock! I too, have noticed how different Singaporeans are from everyone else we have experienced (NZ, Europe, Costa Rica) - how differently everyone looked and behaved. I jokingly mentioned once to Amber - "No wonder I've always felt that "I don't fit in."* Everything and everyone here seems so foreign and alien!" (*One of the many distinctions that I discovered about myself in Landmark Education was the notion that I always felt "different")

It's been wonderful and invaluable watching Amber's "transformation" since our first stop in Los Angeles, where we went into a shopping mall and all Amber wanted to do was leave. Now, I amusingly watch her mosey from fashion store to fashion store looking for new clothes to wear. Granted, we do need proper clothes now that we are living and soon to be working in a very cosmopolitan city. I guess what it is I longingly recognize in her eyes is the losing of oneself in the experience of discovering a new world or reality, and realizing that what you thought you knew about the world and yourself, is only an iota of what reality is, and you can never be sure that what you know is real - or can you?

It's come 7am, and I told myself to take no longer than an hour to complete this blog. So I will end this entry by uploading the last of these photos. Among them is the very lavish renovated Bali-inspired flat where we are living that belongs to my dad, who has very generously let us use the master bedroom while we are in Singapore.