Pink Mouse Farts

The bus sucks. I don't care where or who you are, unless it's a tour bus loaded with groupies and contraband, the bus sucks. I love our new apartment, I'm gonna love it even more tomorrow when I get home and our 1400 lbs of North Graftony goodness is here, but commuting is for the birds and Kellie won't let me take cabs to work everyday, something about saving or something. Yeah, I know, it's Wednesday night which means I've suffered this humiliation for a staggering 3 days. I think the problem with our commute (I'm one stop on the train farther than Kellie) is that we have options.

Option 1 (Kellie's preference) - No walk, take the bus 5 stops to Dhoby Ghaut (I call it Doobie Goat) and take the train 4 stops. About 30 minutes unless you JUST miss the bus.
Option 2 - 10 Minute walk to Clarke Quay (Clarkey) train station, one stop to the Goat, switch trains, 4 stops to work. 30 Minutes and a nice sweaty lather, but no bus.

In other big news, something I've been excited about since we came here in December, I officially indentured my servant tonight. Let me put that into terms that are more acceptable. I hired a domestic helper today to clean our place for us once a week along with some laundry and ironing. She came tonight so she could meet us and brought a friend so she could get a good cleaning in while here. She was FANTASTIC (thank you so much Sally) - Matt and Sam - race is on to book some time with V as her dance card is filling up. You'd think we were sophisticates tonight though, so freakin funny - at 9:30pm we had 2 domestics cleaning and 2 contractors servicing our air conditioners b/c one started leaking on the floor permanently interrupting my American Chopper viewing on Discovery Turbo.

Oh, we disgusted the guy from the cable company because the plan we wanted cost us enough to earn a free 32 inch Panasonic LCD. Mind you - it's half of what I paid at home. Nice guy, though he too asked how much we paid in rent. . .  PT, my new boss, told me to tell people to stop being "kay-poh" which is slang for "nosy" when they ask. We're getting along great b/c I can ask him about the things that confuse me here. Like why if you're on a motorcycle, it's customary to wear your jacket backwards, and on public transportation, you wear your backpack backwards. It's like dyslexic dressing.

So you ALL know - Winnie has gained 2 lbs (that's almost 1 kg) since we left, Mom. . . . .
Because my readership has expanded rather intensely in this region of the country - again I must make comment without judgement: my health plan at work covers me for Dental + Optical in the amount of S$200 per year. YEAR (not visit), unless you visit once a - you know what, I'm judgementing. In Singapore, in order to get paid for a sick day, you must have a Doctor's note. Office hours at my job are 9am - 6pm, with a grace period until 9:30 which everyone takes advantage of. However, should you arrive after 10:00am, it's reported on the daily attendance kicked back to the home office.

Ah yes work - I thought you'd want to inquire about my maiden 3 days. It's off to an interesting start, and again as anyone can find this ramblings, I'll keep my comments rather general but happy to Skype out the scandalous details should you so desire. It's an extremely difficult task to start a job on the same day as your boss. PT is great, he has a great sense of humour (Auntie, I'm purposely writing in Old English, these aren't spell check corrections - it's just fun) and he puts up with my shenanigans, but he can't answer my questions. He did, however, hand me ALL of the largest clients in Asia. I mean, I'm handling all of the blue chip tech advertisers - I mean, try these acronyms on for $ize - MS, EMC, IBM, HP, SFDC, RSA, ORCLE (ha!), BT, SAS, SAP, etc. I have my hands way full, and I was always taught that more than a handful was a waste. Went to my first conference in Asia for a few hours yesterday, and tomorrow I go meet a client in person. I won't brag about who it is, let's just say It's Big Money.

Now, unless someone is on the phone, and I get to play "GUESS THAT ACCENT," the office is deathly quiet, I mean there's only 20 people there. I went over to PT and said, "What's with this place, you can hear a mouse fart?" - And by mouse, I mean the animal, not the PINK thing they gave me that's attached to my work computer. Pink mouse farts - you knew I'd connect the dots for you even though it's late. I promise I'll get a picture up.

Lastly - I got my knew pimp-ass, tailored suit on Saturday, and got it soaked in a monsoon yesterday, but I digress - when I went to get it, Tewsie (or something like that), my guy wasn't there. So I asked someone else where he was and she let me know that he'd been in the hospital for a couple days (that's why I was missing one of my shirts). I said, "is he ok? Is it serious?" I mean, the suit is awesome. She said "He's fine, I think he just drinks too much."

PS - that picture is SO completely not a Singapore bus - you should still consider visiting. . .