tales of tail less cat

my bag has finally arrived. a short 27 hrs after i made it. as much as i pretend to be uninterested in stuff, spending 3+ days in the same dress was starting to become bothersome (to say the least). and let us not even talk about knickers (or lack there of...)

last night i wandered around the arab part of town, and today was spent in little india.  i am amazed at how westernized everything seems to be here.  part of me questions if that 13 hr plane ride actually took me to the other side of the planet, or if we just flew back and forth across the u.s. and were dropped off in some unknown city.  restaurants consist of kfc, long john silvers, hooters... and there are more 7-11s here than i have ever seen in my life.  i found the LARGEST electronics store I have ever seen in my life... it was 5 stories, maybe more and filled to the brim with gadgets and gizmos.  the iphone has saturated the market here, however there are no apple stores.  how do you do it steve jobs??  i love my little nokia phone.  it reminds me of the first phone i ever had, but better.  i. pretty sure its the katorchi (literally "little light") from my uganda days. and it comes with games, whatever happened to free cell phone games?!  my hostel is spitting distance from a mosque which is super sweet, especially since it is Ramadan. i forgot how much i enjoy hearing the multiple calls to prayer everyday.  it's far easier to adjust here than it was to adjust to uganda. i'm not sure if that is a plus or a minus.

i have spent a good portion of the day looking for a room to rent, and yoga classes.  surprisingly yoga is almost twice as expensive here as it is in the states despite the plethora of studios (wouldn't micro-economics dicate that would drive the price down?)

tonight i went to see the wto offices.  I CANNOT WAIT TO START WORKING!  there isn't much to them really, but its all about the nitty gritty development.  afterwards i went to grab a bite with my supervisor and her fiance+friends.  all together there were 2 greeks, one italian, one indian brit, one spaniard, and two americans.  singapore is filled to the brim with ex-pats, but few of them seem to be american so it is a whole new kind of foreign exchange.  following dinner we went and grabbed drinks at this ultra plush hotel, (we went to ride the technicolor elevator) and were lucky enough to be entertained by a singaporean lounge singer. no joke. we also spent some time discussing beer serving monkeys. for your viewing pleasure i wanted to include the youtube clip, but it really screwed with my page layout. to be honest i am considering re-routing my trip through japan, just for the experience