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Another Weekend Another Festival

This year the Mid Autumn Festival, Deepavali and Hari Raya all fall at the same time; so it seems like everywhere you go there are pretty lights. So this Saturday night we went down to Little India to take in the sights with one of Doug's group members and his wife (Jan and Rianna). Dinner was great and not too spicy for Sarah, amazing!

posted by Doug and Sarah @ 4:36 AM 1 comments

Orchids

No trip to Singapore is complete without a trip to the National Orchid Garden, so Sarah headed off one sunny afternoon with another partner while the student husbands were busy working. There were definitely lots of Orchids. Her favourite one was the Jackie Chan Orchid in the celebrity garden but it was just a lone scraggly orchid, so instead below is a picture of the Princess Diana Orchid.

posted by Doug and Sarah @ 3:59 AM 0 comments

A Weekend at Home

This is a good time not to be jet set. It is the Mid Autumn Festival and China Town is lit up with festive lanterns and has street shows, fireworks and a lantern procession. We went down for dinner and the atmosphere was fantastic, although we did miss Ellen's yearly lantern making party to really feel apart of this festival.

posted by Doug and Sarah @ 4:22 AM 2 comments

Tioman #3 - Looking at the pretty things again

Diving on Sunday was back to looking at the amazing underwater scape and then catching a ferry and to start the journey back home. A quick trip but a good trip.

posted by Doug and Sarah @ 12:09 AM 4 comments

Tioman #2 - a good cause

The diving that we did on Saturday was a new experience for us - instead of looking for pretty things under water we went looking for garbage!

Saturday Sept 16th was Project Aware's - International Cleanup day and the Tioman dive shop, B&J, was participating in it, so we joined in as well. World-wide there were over 100 countries and over 300000 people participating and picked up around 3.6 million kilograms of garbage!

In the first dive we were cleaning up the local reef around the jetty, picking up garbage like cans, fishing line and other stuff that people have thrown over the sides of boats and off the jetty.

In the second dive we were looking for crown of thorn on the coral. Crown of Thorn is a type of starfish which kills the coral by latching on and sucking all of the nutrients from it. Normally this is just a part of nature and some coral gets killed but right now there is an outbreak of them and the reefs are not able to grow fast enough to counter what the CoT are eating. Since these starfish have poisonous spikes all over them you have to be very careful removing them using a long poker stick and then carefully putting them into a bag to take to shore and bury them.

Overall it was an interesting day and we got free T-shirts for participating - can't have too many t-shirts...

posted by Doug and Sarah @ 8:32 PM 0 comments

Tioman #1 - getting there

The one very nice thing about living in Singapore is that it is cheap and easy and fairly fast to travel to many places in SE Asia. So taking full advantage of that we went to Palau Tioman in Malaysia for the weekend. Although our travels did not go smoothly, due to getting stuck in traffic and not knowing the fast way out of town (but we now know for next time!), we had a great weekend under the sea yet again!

Around our bungalow we saw monkeys and these ginormous monitor lizards which were over a meter long!

posted by Doug and Sarah @ 8:22 PM 0 comments

It's not all hard work

Although school is very busy, the Insead students do know how to have a good time. Although we don't have any pictures, the year started with a big party sponsored by Bain at a local club, which was a nice way to relax and meet more people.

Last Saturday (the 9th) there was a beach BBQ party at the local beach park, Sentosa. Which is an island resort and is where Singaporeans go to play golf, lounge on a beach, and have fun. Here are some pictures of the Insead Beach Party whish stated at 4pm with swimming, lounging, beach volleyball and going until after dinner and drinks which was very late for some people but only midnight for us. A very relaxing day...

Then on Monday (the 11th) there was a buddy dinner. So we headed over to Doug's P4 buddy's place for dinner where there were about 20 people, good food, good conversation and lots of wine.

posted by Doug and Sarah @ 7:53 PM 0 comments

Learning the hard way

Ketchup and mustard - right?

Nope. Sarah found out, after squirting what she thought was going to be ketchup all over her hot dog and fries, that red is hot sauce and yellow is ketchup and there is no mustard...

posted by Doug and Sarah @ 6:57 PM 0 comments

Welcome to #04-10.

Well it occurred to us that no one has seen where we live. So here are some pictures to help you picture where we live. It is more of a resort then a home, with tennis courts (our apartment overlooks the tennis courts), 4 swimming pools, a gym and beautiful gardens.

It is much prettier (and hotter) in person, we have an extra bed, feel free to come and visit...

posted by Doug and Sarah @ 4:23 AM 0 comments