Final Post

Written December 25, 2015

On December 6, 2015 my life changed forever when I began divorce proceedings and the messy untangling of my life from my ex-husband’s.

Morchinland and all its inhabitants, all its dreams and ideals, all its Utopian perfection, was dead.

And then I fretted: without the lynchpin, without the cog, without the husband to hold this dream together, would it ever survive and thrive?  I tried imagining myself continuing in this world by myself, bravely forging ahead, but alas, Beck put it best: “holding hands with an impotent dream, in a brothel of fake energy.”  Thus my answer was quick and forthcoming, so that by the end of a fortnight, I was preparing to move myself and my children out of state to begin a new life somewhere else, somewhere fresh and vacant, somewhere without the handprints of the past smudging my vision.

The blog entries that everyone has been reading since September 2015 are all stories I wrote before my life went boom.  They are good stories and were genuine and true at the time of their writing.  But they are part of Morchinland, part of a world to which I no longer belong.

Therefore, this is the final post for this site.  Tales From Morchinland is defunct, as there is no longer a unified Morchin family; we are fractured and shattered, broken and remade.  What was is no more.

Thank you for reading these past few months.  Farewell to you all, and farewell to Morchinland.

Goodbye.

The Ponderosa

Written December 30, 2013

There is a ponderosa pine tree growing just beyond the southwest corner of our house. A giant, it towers precariously above the house and only slightly off-set from the power lines that run along the road. Its long-ass needles drop blankets in my yard and huge-ass cones lay landmines throughout its perimeter and I cannot help but laugh at the absurdity of it.

I grew up in the Sierra Nevada foothills amongst a native canopy of ponderosa and digger pines, live, black and poison oaks, manzanita and deer brushes. I know this the tree well. I loved ponderosas growing up. I climbed in the small ones growing on my parent’s property. I braided the 5” needles and sometimes tried to weave them into baskets like the local Native Americans I learned about in my schoolbooks. I graduated from Ponderosa High School where a ginormous specimen graced the back athletic fields (sadly I believe that tree was eradicated a few years back due to age and the danger of falling. RIP, big guy).

Ponderosas suited the area of my youth, and their presence in the skyline of my direct and peripheral memory is both vivid and impressive. But here in western Washington the ponderosa pine is sorely out of place. The needles shed in autumn are long, hard and prickly and interact with the environment differently than Douglas fir needles. Also, the cones huge, are super hard and sticky with sap. If you step on one or stub your toe on one it’d hurt, whereas the Doug fir cones are smaller, softer and downright comfortable by comparison. The point being the poor pine is a little unusual for this area despite its ability to thrive here nonetheless.

However, the tree is a great conversation piece, and more than one neighbor has asked if they might take one or many pine cones home for decoration or projects. I myself have piles of them which the squirrels love to riffle through whenever in want of a snack.

One time, my neighbor told me the origin story of our tree. If I remember correctly, it was planted a million years ago when the TV show Bonanza was at the height of its popularity. Apparently the forest service gave ponderosa saplings to local schoolchildren. The kids living in our house at the time planted theirs in the front yard. Those kids have long grown and moved away but my neighbor bore witness to that saplings rise. A tree that thirty years later would welcome me home.

Its like our sentinel.

So much prickly.

The Ducks

Written September 4, 2015

My kids love the children’s show “Peep and the Big Wide World.” It is about a trio of baby bird friends, a duck (Quack), a robin (Chirp), and a chicken (Peep) who explore the world together and learn and discover all kinds of amazing things. The creators of the show wrote it well enough that it is entertaining to both adults and kids. (For example, a favorite episode centers around Peep and Quack finding a fake duck, whom Quack assumes is real, so they titled the episode “The Real Decoy.” See what they did there??  Hahaha!! ) My favorite character is Quack. Quack is annoying. He is loud and presumptuous and talks or sings all day about ducks and how great they are. And he eats. A lot. He is EXACTLY how I would imagine a duck to act if they could talk and think critically like humans can. Anyhow, Quack is fond of telling stories about how great ducks are. One of my favorite lines in the show is where he simply states: Ducks are the best.

I had chickens growing up. Geese scared me. Other birds, like my sister’s parakeets, were uninteresting and kinda messy. So it never crossed my mind I could have ducks, own them in a flock like I did my chickens, until one day Anya said “Mom, for mother’s day I want to buy you a duck because you like Quack so much.” From that moment on, getting a duck was all I could think about.

But ducks were different: I’d need more than one since they are socially gregarious animals, and though I had a tiny fish pond that could easily hold one bird, any more would be crowded. How to keep my water birds watered? A friend of mine who keeps ducks gave me ideas, such as a kiddie wading pool as a stand-in pond. The rest was easy: they could cohabitate with chickens and the eggs were delicious and plentiful just like a chickens. It was settled. We’d get some ducks.

Soon, in the blossoming springtime of 2014, our favorite feed store started selling the cutest selection of baby Khaki Campbell ducklings. We brought home two yellow fluffballs with huge, flat beaks and large webbed feet. They were so different from the chickens: taller, skinnier, louder, messier, they ate waaaaaay more then the chicks their age. But when they were old enough to go swimming in our fishpond, man were they the cutest damn things you had ever seen!! I had more fun watching their ducky antics. Soon they’d waddle around after the chickens, foraging for slugs in the grasses and quacking on and on and on about, oh I don’t know, probably how awesome ducks are or something like that.

We named them Quack and Zarina. We built a new duck hutch for them to shelter in, and painted the words “Ducks are the best” across the top. The kids decorated the sides with handprints and drawings of Peep, Chirp and Quack.

Soon they were fully grown and I started noticing duck eggs laying around in the oddest of places. They wouldn’t roost in the boxes like the chickens, so I’d see the eggs laying in the middle of the muddy chicken yard, in the middle of the lawn, or hidden in the grasses around an irrigation ditch that parallels the coop. Now, to me duck eggs taste a little like duck meat does: greasy/gamey, a sort of oily flavor that I assume is an acquired taste. From the start I felt they had a somewhat off-putting flavor. But it was nice to know we would reserve the duck eggs every morning for ourselves, leaving the precious chicken eggs for my loyal paying customers whose proceeds were keeping the birds in feed.

Soon, however, the eggs disappeared. My neighbor, an old-timer who had presumably raised or been around farm fowl since before dirt, said ducks will hide their eggs if they realize you’re taking them. I laughed at this, because I had noticed my chickens do the same thing. So every day began a duck egg hunt, though ducks are so much better at hiding their eggs that they are almost impossible to find. In time, we had no more duck eggs, though I doubt it was for lack of laying. (Nine months after giving up the hunt, I found a cache in the tall rushes in the drainage ditch…at least four or five. Most broken open by presumably raccoons. One intact that I broke when I poked it with a stick…man it was stinky!)

Autumn arrived and with it the rains. The ducks loved the water that pooled everywhere in the yard: in the irrigation ditches and drainage canals, in the low spots in the lawn, and would make an adorable snappy-snap sound as they used their bills as shovels to burrow into the rivulets and scavenge for slugs, bugs and all other manner of tasties. They would follow water sources, a rivulet to a pool to the canal to the road and beyond. One night they didn’t return at dusk to be locked into the coop. They were there in the morning, quacking up a storm and waiting impatiently for breakfast. A few nights later they disappeared again, but again were back the next morning.

In early December they disappeared one night and never returned. Their fate is still unknown, though I put out an APB with the neighbors and checked neighboring properties for carcasses or evidence they had moved into any of the five large holding ponds nearby. To no avail. A few weeks later I got a tip they might be at a house across the street, about a half mile away, living with an existing flock of chickens and ducks. I called the house but it was two days before Christmas; nobody answered the call or returned my message. I failed to follow up.

And so we are once again duckless. It is sad, really. They were such a great addition to our farm! I loved their constant, though not irritating, quacking. Their antics were so funny, their run/waddle, their bill-burrowing, their swimming around in water. If we do get ducks again I will provide a bigger and better pond (somehow?) and perhaps more of them to create a better community. For now, I just imagine they are living happily with the neighbor down the street, instead of torn to shreds last winter for some coyote’s meal.

Regardless, I submit to propose the idea that ducks truly are the best.

True story.

“Look,” my daughter said. “They think they’re chickens!”

So cute.

SINGAPORE VI – The Craving

Written November 4, 2015

Singapore, it turns out, is not the best place to get a Mexican food craving. There’s nothing worse than being a million miles from home, surrounded by fantastic foreign cuisine, and you get a big, fat craving for something absolutely unattainable. Real, burrito-bus style, cooked in lard, smothered in cotija cheese, served with ice-cold pico de gallo Mexican food.

The second week we were there I learned there was a Mexican restaurant only a couple of blocks from our apartment. Excitedly we went one day after Will came home from work. The result was so disappointing it is hard to explain. The place was run by two Indian fellas who did a fair job approximating a Mexican dish of beans and rice and whatever else I ordered – enchilada maybe. Point being, the food was horribly prepared, tasted canned and stale, and was essentially worse then something I could throw together on an “oh shit I’m out of food” day.

A few weeks later I noticed that the Mexican Embassy was hosting a dinner and festival near the grounds and it was open to the public. The price of a ticket to get inside was fairly spendy, but we figured we should be able to get good Mexican food at the Mexican Embassy. I should stop here to say I probably have no idea what “real” Mexican food is. But I saw nothing familiar piled on the tables in front of us that night. The food was fancy but wholly unfamiliar to my pallet. Delicious, exciting, upscale, worth the price of admission, though not at all what we were expecting. The upside was we got to see traditional Mexican dancers with the flailing skirts and wide sombreros, heels clicking and clomping, tongues rolling. Always a treat. The downside was I still wanted a fucking burrito.

By this time my mother back in California had heard of my plight and sent me a gift box filled with refried beans, seasoning packets, tortillas, Spanish rice mix. I was delighted, and saved my trove for a special occasion.

More weeks passed and Will was finally given leave to go home or transfer to Kuala Lumpur for another six-plus weeks. We talked it over. Homesickness had set in, and Malaysia was less enticing and came with a language barrier. We decided to go home. And so we planned for our departure, inviting Will’s co-workers to the corporate apartment for a final farewell dinner the night before we were set to leave. That evening I ran to the grocery store a few blocks away. I grabbed some New Zealand ground beef. I grabbed some Australian cheddar cheese. I grabbed some Chinese parsley and green onions. I grabbed two Moroccan avocados. I grabbed a tomato. Back at home I made a feast with fried tacos and burritos and beans and rice and chips and salsa and guacamole.

I had finally found the best Mexican food in all of Singapore.

Acting silly before our meal at Café Mexicana, but really it was a premonition of how the food would taste.

Will being silly before our Mexican meal which ironically left him feeling the same way.

SINGAPORE V – The Lizards

Written September 9, 2015

I don’t hate or fear lizards, but not having grown up with reptiles larger then salamanders I am a bit unseasoned how to handle myself around them.

One weekend Will and I visited the Jurong Bird Park and Jurong Reptile Park. The Bird Park was amazing – there were huge, walk-in structures with netting over 20-stories high and oftentimes covering acres at a stretch, so that their collection of birds was free, flittering, extensive, noisy!, and amazing. Everywhere one walked and looked there were birds of every kind and color just hanging out on railings

or nearby in the brush, or up above in the trees

and fantastic canopy and environment provided by the park. Some of the enclosures were situated up a steep hillside, and climbing the rock stairways and ramps to the top was both exhausting and exhilarating. Outside the canopy there were acres of pools and larger fenced areas for emus and ostrich, cranes and flamingos.

I’ve never seen so many in one group before. There were also rogue flamingos roaming the grounds stealing food.

There was also a huge freezer-room wherein they kept Emperor penguins, huddled around an icy pool of water, I heard these fine birds coo and mumble as they stood regarding us regard them.

The Reptile Park, by compare, was sad and tired. The crocodiles and alligators lived in cramped and crowded pools with little room to roam.

Right after this picture was taken some crocs got into a fight just below Will’s head.

Many of the animals were wounded, with open and oozing sores or missing eyeballs.

Ouchie.

There was a lot of terrifying and loud fighting, and the open pits were only a few feet away from the flimsy wooden fencing around the habitats, and when the animals got into a rumpus, it felt as dangerous as experiencing it in the wild. We quickly moved on. The smaller reptiles, snakes and turtles and the like, were housed in typical terrariums and were fun to look at.

This cute little fella crawled in and out of enclosures following us around.

And the large turtles and komodo dragons were of course a treat to behold.

Chillin’ with my new BFF.

But the most unique aspect was the fact that the park’s owners were overt Buddhists, and had more prayer stations throughout the park than I had seen concentrated in any one area before or since.

The red canopy beyond this temple is where we were expected to hang our coil incense.

Most of the gift shops and stands dotting the pathways sold mostly curled incense that one was to purchase, then hang along provided trellises nearby.

Burning incense coil similar to the ones at the reptile park. Our vendor wrote our names on a red sheet for us, too.

It was all so spiritual and foreign, I never felt more like an outside intruder then I did that day in that space. In fact, when we decided to save our fancy curled incense mobiles so that we might take them home as fun souvenirs the stand owner looked at us with such shock that she yelled instructions to hang and light the thing on the trellis so furiously that we complied, going through the motions until she turned away and we took our trophies down and ran like hell.

Since I didn’t work, I would spend my days wandering the areas between our apartment and Will’s corporate building. Most parks I toured were smaller, standard public spaces, such as the Istana Park just south of our apartment. Istana was a botanical garden with walkways and water structures that were both large and small. My favorite was a river and waterfall that were quite soothing to regard. Often I would sit by this structure, in the sweltering heat, and imagine I was by a cold and icy mountain stream. Water structures and fountains were a predominant feature in Singapore. Everywhere we went showcased some kind of artistic display, sometimes large indoor interactive structures amid gigantic shopping malls, other times stately and respecting, but always present. Considering how hot it was most of the time, it was nice, indeed, to have so much water on display. The sound, the movement, the artistic manipulations, it all served as a unique backdrop to the Singapore experience.

Gateway fountain outside Will’s corporate building.

One of several spitting dragons around a pool near our apartment.

Cuppage Terrace water walls.

Cuppage Terrace’s blue balls.

(It is important to note that Singapore had just celebrated its 35th year of independence, and it was proud of its vast accomplishments.  It was most proud of pulling itself up from a third-world country to a first-world country in only three decades.   Having access to — and indeed an abundance of — clean drinking water is a perfect symbol of this transition and thus they relished in their water displays.)

I am a fan of museums, especially history museums, and so I spent a day in the National Museum of Singapore learning about how the tiny island in the middle of a major maritime thoroughfare between the South China Sea and trading ports along the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean. Singapore means “Lion City” in Malay, though it is most likely named for wild-roaming tigers rather than actual lions. Regardless, most of the iconology of Singapore features some kind of lion, or mer-lion as the case may be. This iconology and the water fountains seemed to be pure Singapore to me, unique from the other influences that befell the tiny island throughout its long history.

Despite this I was still drawn to the Chinese and Japanese Gardens that surrounded Jurong Lake on the southwest side of the island. I had seen several Japanese gardens in my lifetime – including a fancy one in Seattle’s Arboretum. It was indeed tempting for me to want to experience what I considered to be a purer or “better” Japanese garden, assuming such because of our proximity to Japan. And so one day I boarded a west-bound train and sat for the longest subway ride I had taken to date. I was to travel to almost the last stop along the line, and disembark on a lonely, secluded (and kind of creepy) metro station at the north end of Jurong Lake.

To enter the park I had to take a poorly-kept pathway through an open field towards an outclumping of trees in the distance. There were no signs and the only way I knew I was heading in the right direction (or so I hoped) was that there was a 6-storey Chinese pagoda sticking out of the treetops like a beacon beckoning me onwards.

The only indication I was in the right place.

I don’t recall if there was a manned entrance/fee booth once I got to the park boundaries, but I somehow remember hopping over or around a turnstile and continued along a paved road towards the pagoda. The gardens themselves are located on two islands in the lake. I crossed a bridge that took me to the Chinese gardens first, and I took pleasure in meandering the area

Lovely fern gully and waterfall.

Confucius!

until I located a beautiful white marble bridge that led me to the Japanese gardens.

Check me out, I took a fancy black-and-white photograph!

I was a little let down by the Japanese gardens. They appeared a little bland and drab according to what I was expecting. There was a lot of greenways, a few nooks and groves, some bridges, but there was an empty, deserted sparseness to them that left me unsettled.

Quaint bridges and ponds were nice but lonely.

This was a quiet nook where I spent some time contemplating the emptiness.

There was also an odd buzzing noise that was ever-present throughout this part of the island…I never did locate its source or determine if it was some kind of insect or electrical sound. It was disturbing nonetheless.

The Chinese gardens, by comparison, were full of life and bursting with color and flowers and decorations. There happened to be a party or celebration in the park that day, and I kept bumping into throngs of people who were in attendance.

Giant firecracker decorations at the party in the Chinese garden.

I had my most fun inside the bonsai garden. In it I saw bonsai as I had never experienced it before. There were specimens in that garden that were over 150yrs old. I was amazed. A part of me became interested in someday taking up bonsai as a hobby and making beautiful creations of my own.

It was as I was leaving the park and heading back towards the metro station that I noticed a wild-roaming monitor lizard hanging out in the shrubberies and I decided to investigate and snap a picture or two. I had seen a cute little monitor at the reptile park and it seemed tame and harmless, why should this wild one be any different?

He made it as far as the thicket before turning on me.

This monitor allowed me several pictures as he tried to shy away before he decided he had had enough and charged me, mouth open and screeching in a way you only hear of in rapturous horror movies, and I nearly dropped my camera as I scrambled away. By the time I looked back he had retreated back into the brush.

Monitor lizards only charge when feeling threatened, and though this experience was tame it left me with a bit of weariness towards wild lizards in general. I from then on kept an eye over my shoulder whenever lizards were near, just in case. It startled me all the more, then, that day when my husband and I traveled to Pulau Ubin. We had gotten bad advice from either a cabbie or concierge, and ended up at the Changai Ferry Terminal, where there is only passage to the Malaysian mainland. As Will’s co-workers were conferring with some limousine drivers about directions and a possible ride, I wandered towards the edge of the parking lot to view the waters and Malaysia beyond. A ferry boat had just left, and as I watched it sail away I heard a scurrying below me. I looked down and a large, fat monitor lizard (of a different type then the little guys in the park) was running through a drainage culvert just below my feet. It was maybe half the size of a crocodile, and it was making such a ruckus that I yelped and hurried back to the safety of the menfolk in the distance.

I’d had enough out-of-control reptiles to last a lifetime, thankyouverymuch.

SINGAPORE IV – The Toilet

The island as it was in July 2000

Written September 20, 2015

Pulau Ubin was a famed “island lost in time” filled with rural huts, a few thousand inhabitants, ancient dialects, and a culture completely different from the fast-paced urban mainland. It also had a fleet of bicycles, which we were eager to rent and utilize.

We met up with three of Will’s work friends and caught a cab to the Changai Ferry Terminal, where we had been told we could catch a ferry to Pulau Ubin. At the dock, one of the guys went to negotiate the price of ferry tickets. It was here we learned we were not at the Pulau Ubin ferry docks, those ferry docks were at a pier a few miles north at a place called Changai Point Ferry Terminal. It is interesting to note that Changai Point Ferry Terminal was not really a ferry terminal at all. It was simply a collections of piers where one could catch a bumboat.

Bumboats

A bumboat is a small water taxi that hardly looks seaworthy enough to navigate the open waters and large swells of the busy waters between the terminal and the small island we wished to visit. But, a small fleet of these boats depart the Changi Village jetties for Pulau Ubin on a regular basis. These boats are remarkably fast, and the drivers sidle up alongside huge shipping containers that cross back and forth across Serangoon Harbor. I am not a fan of water, or boats, and I must admit the ride was fairly nerve-wracking for me. I have never felt so small.

A minute later it was right up next to us and I could see the rust on its hull.

The boat drops you at the end of a long wooden pier that takes you into the main kampong (village).

“downtown”

There were a handful of concession stores, a food hut, and two or three different places where one could rent mopeds or bicycles.

Best sign ever.  (Bonus: I didn’t notice at the time there was a 3-legged dog in frame.)

The lot of us rented four cycles, and took off to explore Granite Island.

Our rides.

Pulau Ubin was originally five islands separated by tidal rivers that were dammed up to join the islands into one large area. Granite mining ravaged much of the islands, and huge – albeit beautiful – water-filled pits dot the landscape.

Quarry pit on Pulau Ubin

But the vegetation has grown back lush and thick, giving the impression that we were in an ancient forest. We pointed our bikes north towards the beaches of Johor Strait to see the famed turquoise waters and Malaysia in the distance. It was beautiful!

Noordin Beach

We scoured the beach and mangroves awhile, before heading back up the road and detouring along a dirt bike path through the woods.

Will and his co-workers

About this time I got fed up with my bike. The gearshift was sticky and often I couldn’t get the thing to move as I wanted it to. Within two hours I had a blister on my thumb where I had rubbed myself raw trying to maneuver the darn thing. So Will and I parted ways with the others and returned to the kampong to relinquish the bikes. On the ride back we went past several houses and saw residents chopping wood, burning acreage, and sometimes hanging out in groups under the shade trees on their properties.

Farm on Pulau Ubin

We passed a smiling monk in an orange robe tooting along on a moped. It was a rare glimpse into a truly foreign lifestyle.

Once the bikes were returned, we decided to hoof it on foot to get an idea what the west side of the island looked like.

Look what I found!

It was as we were on this walk that disaster struck – my bowels. And it happened a little west of the halfway point between two restrooms. We hi-tailed it to the westernmost toilet, me all the while wondering if I’d make it and if anyone would mind if I went off-trail into the woods to take care of this problem. I wondered if I’d get gored by a wild boar while doing so. We walked on. I was wearing my black hi-top Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars. They are awesomely fashionable shoes with absolutely no comfort or support whatsoever. My feet hurt. My hand was blistered. My gut was busting. I was starting to hate Pulau Ubin.

I knew I was in trouble as soon as I saw the restroom. Small, one-room, whitewashed walls and outdoor spigots (with no soap or towels). Inside a squatty-potty greeted me. For those who don’t know, a “squat toilet” is a toilet – either flush or pit – that sits directly in the ground. To use it one must squat over the hole (and there are usually no hand-rails so you’d better have strong thighs). In urban areas most of these toilets are flushable, and have toilet paper in the stall for Singapore’s Westernized sensibilities. The rural squat toilets have no toilet paper, and the user is expected to use their hand to clean themselves. The high-class rural toilets will have a spigot in the stall so that you may wash as you go. Alas, the squatty-potty that greeted me had no such luxury. I don’t recall if it was flushing or not, but it certainly had no toilet paper, and no hand-washing spigot in the stall. But this was an emergency, and so I took a deep breath, and did my duty.

I spent several minutes washing my hands at the outside spigots, despite the apparent uselessness of the ice water and lack of soap. Exhausted by this ordeal I deemed myself done with the island, and Will and I then made our way back to the kampong to await a bumboat back to the mainland. It was getting dark as we boarded the boat, so the twinkling lights of the Singapore skyline were pretty impressive. The ships in the harbor were also lit up and everything was reflecting off the water. It was a little magical to be travelling through all that sparkle.

A week later a care package arrived from my mother. In it was a tube of tightly-wound camping toilet paper that I could (and did) fit into my backpack and was henceforth never without. Though I never again found myself in a situation like I did on Pulau Ubin, it was a comfort to carry that roll on my person should I ever need it.

A modern and clean squat toilet. I will leave it to your imagination the look of the toilet I used on the island. (Hint: it looked nothing like this.)

——

(It is interesting to note that in the research and fact-checking I did for this piece revealed that the island is now much more of a tourist destination then it was 15 years ago. There are new structures everywhere, new docks, a beautiful new wetlands preserve, visitors centers, the roads and trails have been improved, there have been the addition of campgrounds. But when avian flu hit Asia in 2005, the Singapore government ordered all resident poultry farmers to relocate to facilities on the mainland. Shortly thereafter they re-opened a granite quarry for mining operations. Apparently, despite its increased popularity with tourists, less than 40 people reside on the island today. This makes me sad.)

SINGAPORE III – The Monkeys

Written September 17, 2015

One day my husband came home from the office and announced we needed to visit The Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, the largest hill in Singapore that was a huge park with criss-crossing pathways, rockfaces, hillsides, caves and wild-roaming monkeys! My husband loves monkeys. Their faces, he says, they are so human! I don’t agree as much, considering them more frightening and distrusting, but that’s for another post. For now let’s just say he was titillated at the prospect of viewing wild monkeys in the wild!

We took a cab. The cabbie asked us why we wanted to go to Bukit Timah. My husband excitedly squeaked: “Monkeys!” The cab driver waved us off. “Oh,” he said. “The monkeys. They are no big thing. There are monkeys all over.” We chuckled at this. Sure, he thought monkeys were no big thing: to him they were all over, to us they were new and unique. Nowhere in the continental United States did I know of a place where monkeys roamed wild. We told him so. “Monkeys?” he said again. “They are no big thing, lah. Now, bears. That is interesting!” He turned around in his seat to face us while speeding along the twisting highway at Warp 18. “Have you ever seen a bear?” No, we told him, not in the wild, no. It is rare, we said, and we are taught to keep away because they are big and dangerous. The cabbie was mystified. “I cannot believe you have never seen a bear,” he said. I wondered if he thought we kept them as pets or if they roamed freely through American cities in packs or something.

The nature reserve entrance was down a street lined with apartment blocks, ending in a parking lot beyond which was a visitor’s center and myriad of trail heads. From there we took off into the jungles, peeking into caves, stepping over tangled and exposed tree roots, hopping over creeks and eventually ending up back at the visitor center.

In the jungle.

Despite the “Do not feed the monkeys” signs, the other visitors handed the monkeys peanuts, fruit, sandwiches, candy.

Probably the most adorable sign ever.

The monkeys sat inside the information center like they curated the place: fanning themselves, picking themselves, fondling themselves. Sometimes other things… I was interested in their behavior, and thought them ‘somewhat’ cute, but all the while kept my distance. Monkeys are not to be trusted.

I’m studying the trail map deciding which hike to take. The monkeys behind me are probably plotting my demise.

Long-tailed macaque mommy and baby.

From the visitor’s center we needed to walk through the parking lot, down the apartment-lined street, and out to them main road to flag down a cab. In the parking lot, gangs of rival monkeys followed us, begging for handouts. Others flocked to visitors as they exited their vehicles.

On the prowl.

The monkeys themselves were small – long-tailed macaques – and no bigger then a house cat, but with opposable thumbs and intelligent-looking eyes and long tails twice their body length that they kept curled behind them on alert like an extra appendage. They were formidable opponents.

On the way down the street we saw a woman approaching us from the main road. She was carrying two or maybe three plastic shopping bags filled with groceries. Clearly visible through a bag were a bunch of luscious, green apples. Will and I were busy talking amongst ourselves, chatting about our experience in the reserve and planning the next adventure – there was a night-zoo nearby we were thinking of seeing now that dusk was approaching. We only sort of noticed the gang of macaques as they chittered and chattered and passed us, in a group, on both sides of the road. A few hung back and stayed hidden behind the parked cars that lined the street, chittering amongst themselves. The biggest climbed on the roof of a car and watched the woman approach.

Only when the lead macaque charged the woman and punched at the bag did we begin to take notice. Startled at the monkey’s “attack”, we stopped and watched. The woman, startled as well, now turned her attention to the lead monkey, and did not see what we saw from our vantage point across the street. As soon as she turned her head to yell at the lead monkey, three other macaques darted from behind the parked car and in a beautifully choreographed maneuver: one helped the lead keep her attention diverted, the second struck at the apple bag sending the green orbs flying, the rest began grabbing the scattered fruit and running back to the safety of the park at the end of the road. The woman hardly knew what hit her; the entire ordeal took less than a minute. By the time the monkeys dispersed, all her apples – maybe five or six in total – were gone, and she was left standing in astonishment.

Will and I quickly left the scene. For although we possessed no tasty treats, who knows what those tricky monkeys were capable of!

SINGAPORE II – The Shrimp

Written September 17, 2015

On our first or maybe second night in Singapore, some co-workers invited Will and I and a few other newbie-Americans arrivals to an authentic meal at a dimly-lit tiny hole-in-the-wall outside of town. A cab ride away from our corporate apartment on the modern, glitzy and glittery Orchard Road, this restaurant was in a row of small and similarly run-down stucco-walled establishments. The cab dropped us on the curb, and we followed our hosts down a dirt path around the other side of the building. Chickens and roosters pecked and scratched lazily in the flowerbeds surrounding us.

Inside the place was filled with mostly locals. We may have been the only Caucasians in the place, and it showed; most of us Americans towered over our hosts by several inches to a foot. The maître d’ showed us to our table that was up a rickety staircase to a second story balcony. We were shown to a huge round table and our party of 10 sat down.

Once seated I glanced around. I immediately noticed something scurrying up the wall to my right. Further inspection showed it was a gecko, and there were tons of them crawling up the walls in search of bugs. Geckos soon became a mainstay of our time in Singapore, for although they were absent in more modern buildings (I never saw one in our apartment or in Will’s office tower) but plenty of public buildings around the island seemed infested. These cute little lizards didn’t seem to harm or bother the people and so we simply lived in symbiosis.

The waitress came around to take drink orders and at this time the natives at the table began ordering appetizers and entrees. I will stop here to admit I’m not sure exactly what kind of food I was eating, I assume it was mostly Chinese. But it was amazing. Rich sauces smothered seafoods, scallops, shrimp. Chili pepper abound. Noodles swimming in hot broth. A salad with a dressing I’d never tasted before. Finger-foods fried or wrapped or chilled or crunchy. It was all so good.

Then the waitress sat a bowl of live giant prawn in front of one of the native Singaporians. They were swimming in a brown liquid marinade and crawling over one another in a funny glob of eyeballs and legs. Called “Drunken Shrimp,” this dish is often eaten live or only partially cooked; the alcohol in the marinade helping to make raw consumption easier. Our host picked up the bowl, inspected a few shrimp, smelled the marinade, then handed it back to the waitress nodding. The bowl disappeared. Ten minutes later the waitress arrived with the same bowl. Draped over the sides of the bowl were the prawns: cooked, pink and limply – yet artistically – hanging over the lip, their beady eyes now dull and flat. Our host picked up a shrimp, pulled off its head and shell and legs and tail, dipped the huge chunk of pink flesh into the sauce and proceeded to pop the whole thing in her mouth. Then she passed the bowl to us. We copied her movements exactly.

It was the best shrimp I had ever eaten.

I have no photos of that restaurant or that meal, so here’s a picture of the blue ball fountain at Cuppage Terrace (near our apartment).

SINGAPORE I – The Different

Written October 26, 2015

My husband was lucky enough to fall into a successful start-up company shortly after moving to Seattle that afforded him the opportunity to travel the world opening up company footprint offices in myriad countries. I accompanied him on a few such trips, usually for a short tourist stay, once for a semi-permanent relocation.

In July of 2000 we were to move to Singapore for a minimum of two and maximum of six (or more?) months. The prospect was as terrifying as it was tantalizing: I had studied abroad in college and therefore bitten hard by the travel bug. Living in Singapore – an English-speaking Asian country – would be remarkable and fascinating. For weeks we prepared: I quit my job, we secured an apartment-sitter, we moved the cats to be cared for by Will’s dad. We packed two ginormous suitcases, boarded a 777 Boing Jetliner (the largest aircraft I have been on to date) and we were off. First an eight or possibly nine hour flight to the Narita Airport outside Tokyo, Japan. There we had a several hour layover, wherein we toured the brightly-lit shops searching for appropriately amped power cords that would charge our clam-shell pocket cellular phones. We ate some kind of “local” food (noodles? I think??) and then back we went on another plane for another eight or possibly nine hours in the air until we reached Changi International Airport.

Singapore is a fledgling city-state, at the time 35-yrs-old and still recovering from the devastation of WWII and the Japanese occupation, comprising of an island approximately 35-square miles only a few meters north of the equator. This tropical environment was the shockiest shock to my system that ever did shock. I mistakenly thought experiencing the mugginess of a June afternoon in Minnesota would help prepare me for the 90% humidity and heavy, sticky air that greeted me the moment I stepped off the plane and onto the tarmac where we were walked into the terminal in the early morning still of pre-dawn. This air was so moist I felt like I was drowning, and I instantly became covered in a layer of film: partly my own body sweat, partly the outside moisture clinging to me from the air. In short, I was hot.

Luckily, everything in Singapore is air-conditioned, except the most basic kind of hole-in-the wall joint located in decaying one-story sectors of town (almost all of Singapore at the time was comprised of high-rises or recently demolished areas soon to become high-rises crammed in between block after block of single-story buildings that probably dated back to colonial times). Our cab ride was comfortable yet terrifying as the cabbie zipped into and out of traffic like some kind of possessed lunatic, curiously straddling the lane lines for most of the trip. I thought it was best to ignore his mad “skills” and instead look out my window at the lightening landscape: viewing the different-looking flora, the look of the people, the layout of the new world that was to be our home for the next six weeks.

Our corporate apartment was a nine or ten story building off Orchard Road, a large avenue well-known for its shopping centers, malls, and markets.

July 2000. Our apartment building on Orchard Road. Our room is one of the black-slit windows at the very top.

The apartment was two-rooms and beautiful, with two bathrooms, a full kitchen and amenities such access to a gym, sauna, hot tub and swimming pool. What fun I had establishing a routine: up after Will left for work to iron his shirts for the next day (I know, I was so Donna Reed back then. Luckily he was only in a position where he was required to wear dress shirts and tie for a short time, saving me the agony of that particular torture of domestic servitude), then I would walk the two blocks to the grocery store and shop for that night’s dinner. Then I’d hi-tail it downtown to Avanade’s huge corporate skyscraper to meet Will for lunch.

July 2000. Gateway Plaza, where the Avanade office used to be located.

Then I’d do something: visit a museum, browse a bookshop, walk through a park, until heading for home in time to cook dinner and/or meet Will somewhere for dinner at a restaurant: we sampled all manner of local, regional and foreign cuisine. Weekends we’d go somewhere exotic, such as to a nature preserve to visit wild monkeys, or on a night safari to watch tigers feed, or mountain biking on a remote island.

I got to know the eastern part of the island really well: I’d walk most places and take a subway the rest. If we needed to go great distances we usually hired a cab. It was a somewhat solitary existence: I knew no one and although many of Will’s co-workers offered their wives’ company to me on frequent occasion, I rarely took it. The favored past time of women my age and affluence was shopping, an activity I loathe in most any form, and usually turned down all invitations to meet someone at a mall. I may have looked rude, but I found much more solace wandering a crowded street market or viewing the parks and gardens then I could in any flashy retail outlet.

The culture was a bizarre mash-up of British, Chinese, Japanese, Malaysian, and Indian. On the surface, everything still had a colonial British Empire feel to it, with English-style buildings and street names. British-English is spoken almost everywhere. But the people are decidedly Asian in look, mannerism, and tradition. So I lived in a strange state of semi-comfort: on the surface everything was familiar but dig just a little and it becomes painfully obvious that this is a foreign country. That said, the people were quite friendly, making Singapore a very livable city.

The most striking thing about this city-state was its blatant youth as a first-world country. The country was celebrating its 35^th Anniversary of independence from Japanese occupation during WWII, and the president was hailed as making the remarkable transformation from third-world to first in such a short time. But the growing pains were still evident. The biggest example was the public sanitation campaigns. In almost every modern public toilet there were signs and posters instructing people not only to wash their hands afterwards, but explaining why one shouldn’t leave a mess on the toilet seat or floor. Sometimes I’d see posters explaining why one should brush their teeth daily.

The little touches about the culture were the most endearing. Walking the streets you could see, often every half-block or so, shrines set up to any manner of god or goddess, with food or orange peels left in offering, with incense burning. There were temples of myriad religions everywhere: ornate carvings on the outside, quiet and dark open spaces inside meant for private prayer or meditation.

Ornately carved temple.

And of course there was the No Durian signs on the subway trains. Durian is a uniquely Asian fruit that grows high up on tree branches in the jungles and is often fatal to unsuspecting passerbys who may accidentally get conked on the head when they ripen and fall. The fruits are about the size of a human head, with yellow, spikey skin. The fruit inside is soft and sweet, with a distinct musty-earthy flavor that Will best describes as tasting like rank armpit. It smells about as good as rank armpit too, but it is a popular delicatessen on the streets and can be bought in most marketplaces. Its foul stench, however, permeates small and enclosed spaces, and it was thankful the subways banned it aboard all train cars.

Subway sign.

All in all, Singapore was a wonderful place with plenty of urban, suburban, modern, historical, and natural beauty. I very much enjoyed the opportunity to live there and understand its culture.

Us in our apartment.

DENMARK IV – The Area

Written September 17, 2015

From the moment my Aunt Karen teasingly ripped my backpack from my hands I was completely at her and my uncle’s mercy. I spoke no Danish aside from “flødeis,” “isvand,” “tak,” and “ja kan ikke tale dansk.” (Translation: ice cream, ice water, thank you and I cannot speak Danish, respectively.)  Not a lot of help. And so I relied on them to translate for me, to order food for me, to help me find books or souvenirs or bathrooms, helped me use currency and pay for purchases. I was 19-years-old and felt about as useful as an infant. Despite this, they went out of their way to make my stay there wonderful and comfortable. And it certainly was a treat to experience a country as foreign as this one as intimately as they allowed.

At the time, my aunt and uncle lived in a tiny cottage on the outskirts of Sæby. The cottage was on a road that had only a couple/three homes along it, and bordered a park that was filled with sun dials, statues, pathways and ponds.

Statues in Nellemanns Have, directly across the street from the cottage. Sæby, April 1995.

There were a few days during my sojourn in which I was alone in the house while my aunt and uncle worked. Usually one or the other or both had all or half a day off and would entertain me somehow. But while alone I usually composed letters home and walked through the nearby park and neighborhood. From the top of the hill I could see the sea.

From the top of a little hill in Nellemanns Have. My uncle’s pink cottage is seen at left, and the sea is in the distance.

When they were home I was treated to tours of the nearby towns – usually on bike. I remember following them through the suburban homes near their cottage, out on lonely country roads with views forever, and lovely tours of some of the better parks and woods. The Sæby Woods were my favorite, as was the many sculptures one could see throughout urban areas.

Sæby Woods. This could be the setting for a fairy tale.

“Jordbas” sculpture, downtown Sæby, April 1995.

I especially loved the Herregårdsmuseet Sæbygård.

Herregårdsmuseet Sæbygård. We biked past it while it was under refurbishment. April 1995.

Everywhere the architecture was quite European, and Scandinavian at that, so I marveled a lot at the different look and feel of the places. Despite this, I was tickled to learn there was usually large English language sections in local bookstores, and I recall purchasing several books to get me through the long bus ride home again.

We took a day-trip to Göteborg, Sweden. It was about a two-hour ferry ride, and super cheap for foot passengers, so we walked on.

Never-ending bridge painting is the same in every country.

Once in the city we took a tram into the downtown area. Swedish is enough like Danish, so my aunt and uncle were able to talk with the locals, but it was all Greek to me! I was again taken with the architecture of the city, so foreign-looking to my American eye, like my history books come alive.

Downtown Göteborg.

We spent the day wandering the frigid, windy city, embarrassing my aunt to no end when I tried to steal a poster off a street kiosk of a band named “Amanda” for my sister back home. I was happy, however, to add this country to my list of places visited.

By far the most intense part of my time in Denmark was when it was time to leave.  The return bus trip started out normal enough, though the bus was nearly full and I was soon playing host to myriad passengers who wished to share my seat. Things got more crowded when we reached Hamburg, and some passengers were tripling up in their seats. I was thankful it was just myself and a haggard old woman as the bus lurched off. It wasn’t long, however, before the woman next to me began to speak, at first in German and then when I said “I’m sorry, I only speak English,” she switched so that I might understand her. But it was odd: she wasn’t really talking to me. It was more like she was talking to the side of me. Or not at me at all. She would mutter “Go ahead and confess what you did,” or “Whatever your trouble, there is help, let me help you…prostitution, drugs, gambling, I can help you.  I can see you need help.” As she spoke she took swigs out of a medicine bottle that smelled heavily of iron.  She continued: “I can hear your cries for help.  Let me help you, I can read your pleas.”  I was stunned. My first crazy bus person and I was too young to know how to handle things and I was a million miles from home in the days before cell phones in a foreign country and all alone. What was I going to do if this got ugly?

As if responding to my anxiety, she suddenly stood up, grabbed her bag and mumbled, “I can see you’re terrified of me…” and she moved to sit in the back of the bus.  I sighed a sigh of relief.  My seat remained empty for 45-mins until she came back again.  She had almost sat entirely down when I decided I wanted nothing to do with her, so I stood up, turned around noticed a free seat directly behind me next to a perfect stranger — a kindly-looking German woman.  I eyed her carefully. She was a little older, late 40s maybe, looked sane, but looks could be deceiving.  Still, I was desperate, and asked her if I could sit with her.  She had been watching the ordeal and readily agreed to be my seatmate.  We exchanged names — hers was Jetta — and I thanked her profusely. My hero. She stayed with me the entire remainder of the journey, through the night and across the channel, chatting and telling our life stories. We parted ways in London and I never saw her again, but it was a fitting end to an exciting trek through Europe.