Guinness Book of World Records

I've been very lackluster about updating our blog. We've had an interesting start to 2011 and I will update you all soon. But while I had a moment, I just had to share these pictures. A friend of mine ran into this scene a few days ago. Hundreds of Singaporean's gathered together to get into the GBWR for most people applying face mask.


This is quintessential Singaporean at it's finest!! They had to have over 828 people to win. I have yet to find out if they did it.

Travelogue - playing catch-up - India Part 1

We've started off the year with a packed schedule thinking the next 7 months would be the last we would spend in Asia before returning to the US. Even though we knew our travel plans would make for a hectic couple of months, the prospect of the adventures we were about to take were too hard to resist.

From Jan 27th to Feb 7th, our family set off for India and Nepal traveling with one of Rob's work colleagues. We decided to explore what is called the Golden Triangle of India, which is in Northern India and consists of the cities New Delhi, Jaipur and Agra (home of the Taj Mahal). The latter part of our trip would consist of a 3-day side trip to Kathmandu and few day stopover in Mumbai (based on avail itineraries to get us from Nepal back to Singapore). Our side trip to Nepal gave us a glimpse of the Himalayas and more understanding of what it means to practice Buddhism.

We saw some truly amazing ancient and historical sites, had fantastic weather, stayed in wonderful hotels with great service, and took in some truly unique cultural experiences. On the flip side, there was a yang with our yin (or yin with our yang?). We all got sick at some point during the trip. With the exception of myself and Sabrina, our party dropped like flies one after the other on one particular afternoon starting with Parrish. However, we were soon to follow. The origins of whatever we consumed or breathed in that made us sick was really hard to know. Was is the breakfast at our hotel? Lunch at the cafe? Was a utensil we ate with washed with bad water? Was it airborn? We navigated each day following trying to rest and still take advantage of the typical tourist sights. After all, this was our trip to India! Most likely our only trip. Unfortunately, it is the norm to get sick in India and we knew this, but despite our precautions, our Delhi belly was apparently inevitable.

Experiencing the poverty conditions in India by being among the massive amounts of people living this way was mind-boggling. The traffic, the begging, and the pushiness of street vendors were all things that we were very happy to leave behind. When you experience this kind of poverty where people are using the road side as a toilet, milk producing cows are eating from the trash dumped on the street, and you see kids clothed in dirt from head to toe. Empathy takes on a deeper meaning.

Here is the beginning of a few pictures to highlight the regions we visited.

Jaipur -

'Tis the season

To our friends all around the globe.........

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Holidays!

Love, Rob, Heidi, Parrish & Sabrina

Hong Kong Part II

From Hong Kong 4

Hong Kong Disneyland

Thanksgiving Day was celebrated this year in Hong Kong. The kids had a great time, the weather was just right and the food was excellent!

Hong Kong Disneyland

Fun with Malay

Malay word of the week.......

I thought I would let you all in on the fun. I think most of you know that Rob actually works in Malaysia while we are living here over the boarder in Singapore. We are doing this so that the kids can go to a decent school and we can live in a safer/cleaner place. Rob's commute is not pleasant and he has to go through customs everyday and this takes at least an hour. He's had to add pages to his passport 4 times since we've been here. To keep a sense of humor about this, one of the things Rob does is gives me a Malay word of the week. The Malay language uses the alpha-numeric writing and doesn't have another character set (not that we know of anyway). So all the street signs have the English translation, the Malay word, the Chinese Characters and sometimes Indian.

So here's a quiz for you. The following is a list of Malay words that sound very similar to the English translation. See if you can figure them out.....common now!

butik
teksi
tuisyen
kolej
kastam
imigresen
treler
polis
lif
ais
kad

Bonus word:
air (hint: it relates to ais)

Tattling and bickering

Rob just said to me tonight, referring to the bickering and tattling our kids were doing, " I know this is what Todd (his older brother) and I did to my mom and dad. I don't know how we survived."

So, we are sitting here on the couch on a Friday night in a bit of a stupor, thinking "Please go away.....if we ignore this, it will go away.....please!" Maybe if I write about it on the blog it will go away.

No such luck..... Gotta go!