November 14 - Singapore
Jon and I slept in, and then spent the afternoon in town. We went to the Internet Cafe, where we caught up with friends and family and finalized our sub-lease with the people renting our apartment in New York. For those of you who've been asking, we plan to stay abroad for as long as possible. Our sub-lettors have extended the sub-lease until February, and then we'll go month-to-month after that. They're looking to buy an apartment in the city, so we'll stay overseas until they give us 30 days notice. At the latest, we'll be back in the city in June of next year.
After the Internet Cafe, we walked around Raffles City (one of the MANY shopping malls here in Singapore) and watched some little kids play in a neat looking fountain.
The fountain had four different spouts that were timed with one another. They made some pretty interesting designs and the little kids squealed with delight each time the water came out. In the background, the decorations were crazy looking palm trees with Christmas designs. The theme of the display is called "Christmas With an Edge". Yeah, no kidding!
We also spent an hour or so in Sim Lim, the electronics building, where Jon drooled over stereo speakers for a while.
We stopped by the Raffles Cinema to see if we could catch a movie, but they'd changed the listing from the other day. Now, instead of a few good movies, they had three movies that didn't look interesting at all. So we headed back to the room to see if we could get in touch with Allen.
Barbecue
Allen called us in our room and gave us directions to his friend Tim's apartment. About an hour later, we took a taxi to Tim's place. It was BYOB and BYOF (food), so we had to find a grocery store near Tim's apartment before we went in. The doorman of the building told us that we could find one down the street. The grocery store was called "Cold Storage" and was so western that it even had barbecue sauce! We were thrilled with it. We picked up chicken, buns, sauce, and some beer and walked back to Tim's to meet everyone by the pool.
Allen was there with Michelle and her mom Nella, who plays the cello for the Singapore Symphony. We also met Tim and his wife Cindy. Tim is a nutty tuba player from Texas and is as much a riot as Allen said he was. So Jon hit the grill and we hung out and had a great time.
Allen and I joked about the borderline-reprimand we got via email from my Dad today because he thought we hadn't got in touch with each other. It basically said, "Here's Allen's contact information and you better find him or you're in big trouble." Well the email wasn't that bad, but Allen and I both agreed that it made us squirm in our respective seats. Allen said he knew he was in trouble because the email was signed "Dad Marstall". So funny that, 16000 miles away on the other side of the world, and our parents can still scold us quite effectively. (Just teasing you Dad!)
The barbecue was a blast. It was really interesting to hang out with a bunch of musicians for an evening because it's the complete antithesis of what Jon and I know. Our boring business world is so far removed from the world of art and we've really never been exposed to it. They talk about pieces of music as we might talk about business meetings.... "remember the time we were playing this and such-and-such happened?". I asked them if they memorized all the music they played or if it was just short-term memory. Nella gave me an interesting analogy: she said that it's like reading a book. You read it without memorizing it, although you may remember bits and pieces of it. And if you re-visit it 5-10 years from now you'll still remember the gist of it. So interesting!
The Symphony has rehearsals for 3-4 hours per day, and they sometimes practice personally beyond that. But practicing is physically taxing so they can't overdo it. Their fingers/lips get tired if they do. Allen actually has an old friend who he says was a child prodigy, but who injured his upper lip because of overuse. Now he can't play as well as he used to. I'd never really thought of musicians as having these kinds of problems, but it makes perfect sense that they might.
The other interesting thing is that - in the Symphony - they have the same issues that we do in an ordinary office. They make strategic career moves. They have office politics. They work with people they like and don't like. They have managers who make bad decisions. They have the same things that we have, but in a different setting.
After the barbecue, we went up to Tim and Cindy's apartment on the 10th floor. They have a spectacular view of the water and can see the islands of Indonesia from their windows. Michelle and I hung out and chatted with Cindy for a while. She and Tim are from small towns in Texas and have been in Singapore since January. She's quite the anomaly to her friends because she lives in this exotic city far away and they've never left the state of Texas. But she seems to have made the adjustment without any problems at all.
After a final beer run, we settled in to watch "Evolution" on DVD. Even though we'd already seen it in Nepal, it was still entertaining. More entertaining was listening to Allen and Tim laugh outrageously at the funny parts. Allen kept laughing and saying, "This movie is so stupid!". But it really was fun to hang out.
We caught a taxi back to our glamorous hotel and quickly fell asleep.