Two years in Singapore

Friday the 15th of October 2010, I wrote a blog post about our arrival in Singapore and posted a hazy picture from our window of the city. Today I'm looking back at the two years and reflecting on all the highlights and themes.

 

The First Year

2010 to 2011 was quite an adventure. While we'd left behind a marvelous life back in California we were not homesick at all and really didn't look back. This first year was all about discovery and adventure. We traveled, Joel especially traveled for his work (in fact was nearly not a resident due to the number of days he'd been away). Highlights were exploring the city, making new friends and taking side trips to Malaysia and Indonesia and hosting my family here in the Summer. At the end of that year we were into our second Monsoon and pretty settled in.

The Second Year

We have a mixed bag of feelings about our second year, 2011-2012. I think a lot of the things we compromised in our lives to be here started to wear thin. We were more annoyed with cultural idiosyncrasies as our adventure had morphed into having to just get on with life. We both started to feel restless with the constant noise of the city and we really yearned for clean air. Taking side trips became of paramount importance. The highlights from this year were our trip to Paris and London for Christmas, Bali again in January, my graduation and our trip to California, our trip to Thailand. For non-travel highlights, in March 2012 we adopted Kopi-o and then in June we found out we were expecting our first baby (due Feb 2013).

The Third Year

What's in store? Well we have more travel of course — at least until they start to kick me off planes. And then travel with our little family of three once he/she is equipped with a passport. There are so many places we still have not crossed off our bucket list. Will it be our final year in South East Asia? I'm not telling! You'll just have to stick around and see.