An unplanned hospital tour

After the sleepy arrival from the Hobbit Festival last night we crawled into bed hoping to be asleep the moment our heads could hit the pillow. Unaware of the hidden peril of this I decided to change from lying on my right side to the left. Innocent enough no? Half way through this manoeuvre I was in blinding pain and couldn't move either direction. Joel rescued me and with my pillow fortress wedged around me I got to sleep. In the morning I was shocked to discover that the sudden pain attack had not been a random or fleeting thing at all. I couldn't completely stand up or walk or move my right leg much without assistance. Joel dressed me while I looked up our closest ER.

We slowly shuffled into the Wellington Hospital at 1pm and I spent a few hours in the ER with nurses and an ER Dr who were amazingly respectful and attentive. I was moved to the Women's acute care wing for the rest of the day where I was under the care of a very good midwife and eventually had two different opinions from their two female OBs on duty. Five hours later we'd ruled out anything scary, the baby was doing well and was more than happy to kick anyone who cared to poke around. The final consensus was that this was muscular skeletal and no one could really get an affirmative answer on just how badly the round ligament in question had been injured. I refused pain killers again and we went slowly back to our host's home. Marvelling at this clean, well run hospital and the amazing care we'd consistently had from each person we'd encountered.

I'm not terribly mobile and am on partial bed rest again so we are spending the next few days enjoying the experience of renting a Bach along the coast of the North Island. It's a nice cottage facing a small sand dune which breaks the frigid wind. The beach front is beautiful. We are now both in our winter parkas as "early summer" here is about the temperature of early early Winter in BC. Yesterday was 7 degrees!

Monsoon is the other season

Usually I am quite a vocal hater of rain. The cold whipping diagonal kind that spurts and gusts and makes the idea of an umbrella laughable. In other words the Pacific Northwest from September to May. All kidding aside, that late fall cold rain with the darkness is really something left coasters like to complain about and why shouldn't we? It's god awful. Singapore actually gets more rainfall than Vancouver (shock and awe I know). Rain here is that tropical gush of water with a few customary claps of thunder. It falls straight down (and at a rate that makes it bounce as high as your face) but then it ends. So yes... it rains here but it's different. Until Monsoon.

Weather and Widgits

Weather reports for Singapore and (especially) my mac weather widget are completely useless. Just because some part of the island may be getting struck by lightening at say 4:30pm for an hour, it's officially a stormy day. The mac widget updates with the reality once a day is past so it perpetually looks like we just had a great day and now we're heading into six days of storms. Let me translate the above forecast: expect it to actually be hotter than speculated every day and sunny or hazy with a chance of flash thunderstorm at random. Repeat.

Dispatches from New Zealand: Wellington looks like Victoria

Photos from Joel's blackberry from his three weeks in New Zealand. By all accounts Wellington sounds a lot like Victoria. (Nice views, really dodgy weather).

Return to Singapore

Victoria, SF, Narita, Singapore. In that order. My flight home was virtually uneventful and I slept most of the way. I had window seats and skinny neighbours and kind people who put my carry-on luggage above for me since I'm too short to do this myself. I dislike flying without Joel mostly because of the dreaded stowing and un-stowing of luggage, and having big sweaty guys (who should have bought an extra seat) spill into mine and snore the whole way. I understand a woman somewhere has to put up with you, it's not me. This aside, I'm a good flyer, and generally don't particularly care if I actually have company or not since as mentioned, I take a few Nyquil and sleep and sleep and sleep.

Joel was waiting at the airport looking gleeful but tired as we were an hour late and he's usually long asleep by 1:30am. Had a restful sleep and headed out this morning into a glorious sunny day to get an iced coffee. It was one of those perfect walks where the sun trickles down through the trees creating spotlights on iridescent green plants. Shop owners unroll their awnings and roll their goods out onto the sidewalk as I pass by and there's a smell in the air of baking soil and concrete. It's not overly hot or humid right now, maybe 28 degrees with around 70-80% humidity. I'm so happy to be home.

Monsoon afternoon

Monsoon Rain part 1 from Stacey Clarke on Vimeo.

A typical afternoon shower in Monsoon season in Singapore. This was shot from our little covered balcony with my iphone.