Intro, Ramblings, & a Few Singapore Pics

Allllllright!!! Finally, some time to try and update this blog of mine. FYI, I've been meaning to get going on my blog for quite some time now. But, other factors have had other ideas -- most notably, our wireless internet connection at home in the guest house! I'm sure you'll be hearing more about this in the future (or maybe not, hopefully we're going to get more routers soon...cross your fingers!) but it is a bit of a headache, always cutting in and out and painfully slow, especially when you're trying to do something extremely important like create a Paneer Belly BLOG!!!!

Which is why I've finally decided to set aside some time right now at work to get caught up. (Before you scold me for blogging at work, let me inform you that I will be in the office from 10 PM to 2 AM my time again tonight, for the 3rd time, finishing work from Mt. View. So I think I've earned an hour of blog time thank you very much. And it's not even gonna be an hour, I have a meeting at 3! curses).

So, as you know, this blog idea is stupendous. Mom, dad, maddy, bun, papa, joel, spotless, lily, friends and family back home and friends unknown in far away lands, please check in on me here, and make lots of comments! I miss you all. Well not my unknown friends in far away lands. I haven't met you yet. But still make comments.

Let's step back now and provide a little background: A couple months ago I was approached at work about the possibility of heading to our office in Hyderabad, India, for six months. Pretty exciting! At first, I was a little hesitant (I’ve got it pretty good in CA!) but I decided to do it. It helped that Selin is also over here with me for the 6 months -- in fact, she was the pioneer and came over 2 weeks before me to scout it out and make sure it was up to my lofty standards. It passed inspection…I came…and I’m really glad to be here. It’s quite an experience and opportunity to do something new and see a part of the world I've never seen, and know very little about.

The time to leave quickly approached, and in my last week, I found myself with tons of stuff to do...to no surprise I left most everything to the last minute, so it was pretty hectic getting out of the USA, but I made it and so far things are going well. (I wouldn't have made it w/o Joel's help, thanks bro for doin all the dirty work!!! The rest of you guys still in CA, you're gonna have to help out too w/ moving me out of my apt...you're not off the hook either...). I also managed to do a lot of the things I'm going to miss here in India: like dawn patrol surf sessions before work (I got in 4 straight!!!), DTSJ (that's downtown san jose for those not in the know) foosball tournament parties, and hanging out w/ friends. Also let's not forget a fantastic weekend visit home, where we undertook the "Tour de Oregon" -- Portland to Sisters to Cannon Beach to Portland!! In 3 days!! I have lots of great pictures from that I'll post here sometime soon.

But back to India: I left from SFO on Monday Sep 25, at 11 PM--first stop Hong Kong, then Singapore, then finally about 48 hours later, Hyderabad, India -- my home for the next 6 months. I flew on Singapore Airlines, truly a wonderful airline, and that made for a good voyage. Every chair has it's own TV! With about 100 movies and TV shows for you to watch, on demand! Somebody really should have told me they were on demand -- I didn't know they were, so started watching the movie 'RV' (with Robin Williams, he takes his family on a RV trip to Colorado so he can secretly attend a business meeting, man it had some funny parts, thanks Joel for the recommendation, I was cracking up on the plane) about halfway thru...watched until almost the very end, then accidentally hit a button on the remote, and realized whoa it's fast forwarding, leading me to figure out dang! This is on demand! so I went back and watched the first half of the movie. If the movie was good in that scatterbrained order, it woulda been phenomenal when viewed from start to finish in it's entirety!! Now you know: SINGAPORE AIRLINES has ON DEMAND movies.

So on my layover in Singapore, I hung around the airport for a long time, but then took a free bus into town. Because I missed the bus I was going to take, I only had an hour, but it was cool, I checked out Bugis Street, which is this big outdoor shopping area. I took a few pics, check em out:

Bugis St: Lots of little shops

Fresh Fruit in a cup! (I had a coconut, I think it's an acquired taste)

I walked around the shops, got a Singapore t-shirt for me and one for Selin, and then caught the bus when it came back in an hour to take me back to the airport. By the way, the Singapore airport is huge -- basically a giant shopping mall with airplane parking. There's even a movie theater, a gym, and in-airport hotels!

Cosmetics anyone?

Airport koi pond

After hanging out in Singapore and Singapore's mega airport for ~6 hours, my flight time finally came, and I was off for 4 more hours of flying until my arrival in Hyderabad.