disneyland

i swear singapore is one big disneyland. with embassies around the world. it's very clean, very pretty, very maintained and coiffed. just like disneyland. but, for some reason, i like it better this time than on previous visits. maybe that's because my hotel is right next to clark quay, which is a pretty happening spot.

observed in singapore:

1. people walking around in stores eating really weird looking stuff (something that looked like it was covered in red bean paste on the outside and had some rice mixture on the inside).
2. tips on the radio for being more organized and thereby living a happier life.
3. young, prosperous-looking indians.
4. young, prosperous-looking filipinos.
5. erasers in the shape of sushi.
6. a strange store called daiso where all of the craptacular things cost only $2 (sing dollars).
7. models of pretty candy-colored sony cameras (built-in 4GB memory) which i feel a strange desire to own (now, now, now) mostly because i've never seen them anywhere else.
8. shops which sell only bling--hair bling, phone bling, bindi bling, all bling, all the time.

that's all for now. will check in again later...

serenity now

i'm only on the first leg of my long journey to singapore. and so far, it's been a chain of frustrations:

1. typical righteous danish woman woman from the much longer Economy class/Non-Gold /Platinum line in CPH tries to butt into the Business/Gold/Platinum line because her line was taking too long. consider going postal for brief moment. luckily, the guy behind the counter turns her away.
2. pick security line inhabited by elderly people who are clearly traveling for the first time and have all of their gallon bottles of shampoo with and are bewildered as to why they're being taken away. again with the thoughts of going postal.
3. CPH airport, to my great sorrow, no longer has Hendrick's (best gin ever, loved by a small handful of people, all over the world).
4. queue at starbucks in kastrup airport far too long to obtain much needed grande chai latte before flight to amsterdam.
5. nose and sinuses totally and completely stuffed up during entire flight, severely restricting ability to breathe! brain clearly in need of all the oxygen it can get.
6. singularly unhelpful woman at the counter in KLM lounge near F gates causes me to want to scream, but instead i lower voice an octave and go into patronizing mode [strangely this does not help]- understand for a brief moment why people totally go postal.
7. old woman offloaded from wheelchair and deposited in seat next to me is wearing what can only be an entire bottle of truly offensive perfume. stuffed up nose chooses THIS moment to clear.

on the bright side, things can only get better from here, right?

the specific ocean

i'll be spending much of monday and a good part of tuesday flying, so i'll catch ya in a few days from somewhere near the specific ocean, as my nephew finn (in iowa, not the one in sweden) would say...actually, it's more like the south china sea. i just wanted to say specific ocean.

just desserts

just over a month ago, right here in the blogosphere, a very lovely blogger on the other side of the world stumbled across my blog. finding we had many thoughts in common, we began a conversation across the miles. it so happened that this person's spouse was going to be traveling to denmark in early may. so, plans were quickly made to get together with him to see the sights of copenhagen and have dinner together.

yesterday was a beautiful, sunny spring day where copenhagen showed herself at her very best. the streets were full of people in good humor thanks to the fine weather. the trees were decked out in the fresh green leaves. there were even music performances here and there on small squares around the city. nyhavn with its colorful facades was crowded with the happiest people on earth (the danes come out number 1 in this survey year after year) or at least with the happiest tourists. we took a canal tour to see the city from the water and all along the way people waved and raised their glasses in high spirits (and one group with especially high spirits even mooned us) as the boat passed by.

it was, in short, a completely and utterly lovely day. which ended with a dinner at peder oxe on gråbrødretorv, which was finished off fittingly by the lovely tray of dessert above, which was shared by the new friends over conversation in which they marveled at the chain of events which had to come together for the dinner to take place. the chances were, looking at the situation, slim to none that these people would ever meet and have such a wonderful day together, but yet it happened. the only way it would have been better would have been if the lovely blogger from the across the world had been there too.

it would seem to be the beginning of what promises to be a long friendship.

i do so love the blogosphere.

when inspiration strikes

you just gotta run with it...

i think i just might have to become a seller on etsy.

if wishes were horses...

inspired by jaime's beautiful post on making a wish and a desire to think happier thoughts than yesterday's post...

i wish...

...the house was finished and i was writing this from my beautiful new "writing house" in the garden.

...there was no such thing as slugs.

...that there was really such a thing as a star trek-style transporter and i could just blink and find myself in singapore on monday, rather than flying 19 hours.

...that i could meet and hang out in botswana with mma ramotswe from the #1 ladies' detective agency.

...that i could really fly like i do in my dreams.

...that i could stop being such a horrible procrastinator.

...that i could go wild asparagus hunting with my mom...

...and hunting for morels with my dad. right now.

...that i could wander a ruin and feel the ancient winds of time blowing over me, washing me in the echoes of the memories of all of those who once walked there.

...that i was lying on the bridge in the pasture down by the lake, looking up at the stars, listening to the frog song from the creek below and feeling the warm breeze of a summer evening wash over me as i breathed in the smell of prairie grass.

...that every parent of every child in the world cherished that child and enabled them to grow into the person they were meant to be.

horror stories

i can't stop thinking about the horrible story emerging from austria--where a 70-something father imprisoned is daughter in the basement for 24 years and fathered 7 children with her. is it a symptom of a sick society that such a thing could happen? have we really stopped taking note of the people around us to the extent that no one noticed that such a thing was happening, even the man's wife/woman's mother, who lived in the very apartment building?

when i used to take the train in to the city on a daily basis i saw the same people every morning, since people are creatures of habit and tend to sit in the same place, in the same train car, day after day. it used to drive me totally crazy that it never even occurred to these people who i saw on a daily basis to even give the slightest nod of good morning. i didn't necessarily want to sit and chat with people all the way into the city, but i would have liked the acknowledgement from another human being that they recognized me and that i was also there on a daily basis. the lack of any glimmer of recognition from my fellow passengers rendered me also unable to greet them myself. somehow, i folded under the cultural pressure.

i think that something like the austrian story could happen here where i live. although we know our neighbors on both immediate sides of us, we don't have more than a nodding acquaintance (they DO nod in recognition sometimes) of the other neighbors on our street, which is a cul de sac. some of the houses on our street are huge. these people could easily have the children locked up in the basement and no one would notice.

but, i don't mean to be humorous about this. this is serious. this is about how we are present in our own communities and in the life of that community. what do we do to contribute? i'll admit, i don't do that much. of course, i shop in the shops and grocery stores and frequent the few restaurants in town. there are even a couple of those restaurants where they know us and recognize us as "regulars." the same is not true of the other shops and grocery stores--there is a cultural barrier, preventing people from acknowledging that they recognize you, if they didn't meet you back in kindergarten.

we don't really participate in what little cultural life there is in the town--a small carnival came last weekend and we didn't go. there is a viking festival every summer and we've never made it over there. of course, with sabin being in school now, we attend events at school and have a chatting acquaintance with some of the other parents from her class. but, i can't say that we make any great contribution to the life of our community. if we want to see theatre or a concert, we go in to copenhagen. i can't actually say that we, from a cultural standpoint, live particularly locally.

even being here in the blogosophere is a way of NOT being present where you live. i'm getting the social interaction that i don't get from my community here online. and is that a good thing? i increasingly think that a film like the matrix is not so farfetched. i'm plugged into the online grid, so i don't need my local surroundings. i especially don't need to get my social life there. and i think i should be more troubled by that. and i am becoming more troubled by that.

how do we reconcile what is, to me, clearly a social evolution that we are participating in online with living and being present in our local communities? i'm sure that we will find way, but i think we need to push ourselves to think about it and participate in it and not just simply let it happen TO us.

what do you think?