Archives

The Color Orange

Here’s another reason I like Blogger so much. They make judicious use of the color orange in their quite-well-designed logo. In fact, it’s one of the few free Webmaster tools whose badge I’m not embarassed to display. Happily, it nicely matches the Subtraction decor.

Blogger gets another plug out of this!

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On Travel

People travel by air from business affair to business affair, literally and repeatedly leaving behind the notion of being rooted in a single place for any indeterminate span of time. This is a way of living for a population of transient professionals, whose lives are divided into mini-chapters, opening and closing with airborne views over cities seen in miniature, and buffered by time spent in the raspy, captive climate of airplane cabins.

Earlier this summer, I met a Westerner in Asia who hadn’t been home in nearly two months. He’d been on a string of digressing business trips for weeks, starting off in California, and bouncing through Australia, Singapore, China and Japan. His home, when he was at home, was Denver, Colorado, so chosen because of its convenient location in the geographic center of the continental United States. "It works out great," he explained, "because when I travel from coast to coast, I can always stop off quickly at my apartment to pick up a change of clothes."

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Anywhere I Go, Here I Am

Leaving New York a second time isn’t going to be much easier than leaving it the first time. I think I understood this, at least subconsciously, before I left Singapore; it was part of my reluctance to come back. I knew once I grew re-accustomed to the particulars of living in this city again, I’d renew an attachment to it that I’d begun to suppress at the end of July. Now it’s two and a half weeks since I’ve returned, and I’ve spent that time working among my old colleagues and hanging out with my old friends. Generally, I’ve been having a blast in all of my old haunts while, in the back of my mind, also dreading another impending departure.

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Get Back

After less than a month in Singapore, my company is calling me back to the States. It’s a temporary situation, but I could be back on the East Coast for as long as six to eight weeks, after which time I’ll return to Singapore. The reasons are complicated, but not all bad: changes are afoot in our organization, and my old boss has asked me to return and help him as he transitions his group through the process. It will likely be a fun challenge.

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River Place: It’s a Place Near a River

My condominium complex is called River Place, so named for its proximity to the Singapore River. If the word “river” brings to mind the coursing magnificence of the Hudson or the Potomac, you may need to readjust your expectations. This river is more like a canal; it’s a narrow, brown waterway that seems in no hurry to go flow anywhere. Nearly motionless, no river breeze blows off its banks. In fact, there are no river banks to speak of. Urban development has built up right to its edge, so you could be forgiven for not even realizing the river was there.

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Bargain Toy Bin

People tell me Singapore isn’t the bargain mecca it once was, but in my short time I’ve found that some deals can still be had here. The exchange rate is favorable to Americans, with every U.S. dollar buying about SG$1.72. That can make it tough to keep from reaching for your wallet while wandering the city’ interminable shopping arcades. For a week, I was doing an admirable job. I’ve been frugal, purchasing only what I’ll need in the short term while stocking up on goods for my new apartment.

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Dear Diary

So I’ve been thinking of keeping a journal for some time, of recording my thoughts and posting regular entries to my Web site. A few things have been driving this idea.

The most obvious rationale is this recent sea-change in my life. My relocation to Singapore has been nontrivial – it’s a big deal in fact, at least to me. I’ve been reckoning with an immense docket of changes and challenges. All of which seem like ideal fodder for posterity; an amateur writer in me feels compelled to record what I can.

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Sydney Shine

Last Sunday night, I flew out of New York and began a twenty-two hour trek around the world to Singapore. By the time I finally arrived on Tuesday morning I was beleaguered with jet lag, but Singapore greeted me indifferently with its usual, unforgivingly hot and humid weather. The equatorial heat is nearly always a shock to the system and it compounds travel exhaustion, so I was lucky to spend only a day in Singapore before returning to the airport. That same evening, still unrested, I flew out to Sydney, Australia on a business trip.

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New York, See You Later

Fitzgerald wrote: "The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and beauty of the world." He was writing about a particular approach-way to Manhattan, but it’s the same sentiment anyone feels when the city is just out of reach. Seen from beyond its limits, it’s a tremendous promissory oasis — the greatest repository for possibility ever constructed by human hands. This is its elusive sleight of hand: New York is never so romantic than exactly at those moments when it cannot be had.

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