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We did last summer a trip to San Francisco and British Columbia, to see Cindy’s brother get married and then visit some of Cindy’s friends in BC. Chantel was able to make the trip up to BC as well, so it was great getting to see some familiar faces from Lafayette – I know Cindy was pleased!

San Francisco definitely lives up to its nature – a very “fruity” city, but the charm was there, from the Golden Gate Bridge to Pier 39. Cindy and I also took a wine tour through Napa Valley, and we really felt cultured while going through it. Will’s wedding was quite nice also, Cindy was asked to read an original poem during the ceremony. <3 <3 to my writer wife. Great trip overall.

British Columbia really reminds me of Norway, with the greenery, rainy weather, and incredibly nice people. Terry was nice enough to take us on a tour of Vancouver Island, from one side of the island to the other, before taking us on a trip to Whistler-Blackcomb mountain. EXTREMELY beautiful nature out there. I guess I can mark up British Columbia as another place I’d like to retire to :p

And finally, Johanne and Magnus came to visit us, all the way from snowy Norway to enjoy our winter heat. We spent some time in KL showing them around, then made a trip to Kuching in Sarawak. I had hoped that we would be able to do some jungle hiking, but the weather was too rainy and chancy to do much – even the tour companies weren’t running We still got to see a bunch though! Tusen takk for visiting us!

Coming in next update… our Norway trip pictures!

I apparently forgot to make a post about the whole reason I brought back my website, the Singapore Marathon!  Cindy and I decided to challenge ourselves to run in it, with her doing the 1/2 marathon and myself doing the 10km run.  It was our first time for either race, and we spent the last few months training for it.  My training started off pretty spotty, but by race day,  I can proudly say that running for 30 minutes isn’t a problem anymore!  Cindy did her 1/2 marathon in <strong>under 2 hours</strong>, and I managed to get through my 10km in 1 hr 19 min.  Not the best time certainly, but I’m happy I was able to do it.  I likely would’ve made better time, but at the 5km mark we had a steep bridge to go up, and that just took the wind out of me from that point on.  I simply hadn’t trained for that kind of steepness.  Up until then though, I had really been kicking my treadmill time by a fair margin.  Best of all for me though, is that this was 2 days after my 30th birthday – I really proved I was in the best shape of my life, and I hope to get better.  I’ve slacked in December some on continuing to run, but I will be getting back into the swing of things for January.

I had some work to take care of that week afterward, but we did manage to make our way out to the Singapore Zoo.  We had done the night safari last year, but the zoo proper is just astounding, right up there with the San Diego Zoo.

And to share the general photos of Singapore

I’m kinda getting used to wearing a tux now… Marine Ball for the 234th U.S.M.C. anniversary was a blast. The dinner unfortunately wasn’t very large, especially since I had more or less skipped lunch that day. But tasty! We ended up going out with Finten and Jennifer with some of the Marine guard to Asian Heritage Road, and managed to crawl off the dancefloor around 3 in the morning. Most fun I’ve had in awhile really, and made me miss all the dancing and going out Cindy and I would do in Lafayette.

I am about “balled” out this past couple of months, looking forward to being a homebody for the rest of the year. There are some Thanksgiving and Christmas parties at some friend’s places, but at least I can just show up in jeans to those!

Now that I’ve finally beaten GTA3-San Andreas, I’ve been catching up on my reading. First, something easy – Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. You’ve probably already heard about it, but it’s making the rounds in our household now. Much of what is in the book are ideas that I’ve (and many others) have had before, that success is more of a matter of “right place & right time,” but it is interesting to see just at fundamental of a level it exists at, how the seemingly insignificant at the time makes such a huge difference in people’s lives later on. It’s made me review my life a little bit more and identify those crossroads, and how it affected my life. Anyway, it’s some fluff reading before I get into the real bastard of a book and the preceding books in the series.

especially during Halloween! It was two nights of witching hours for us this year. Cindy and I again went with a theme, this time of Scooby Doo. She made a great Daphne (rawr) while my slacker butt went as Shaggy. We even had scooby snacks to pass out! The first party was at the lounge in the US embassy – we made a few friends there, some of which CIndy had already befriended and I got to meet for the first time. The next night we went party hopping to a couple of places, the first near Changat with a superhero theme. We had such illuminaries as Captain Offensive, The Flash, and various other superheroes that didn’t have names, but did have some interesting powers. It was quite a cool party and a good way to start the night before moving on to the next.

And the next place paid off. By far the winner of Halloween partying are the Norwegians, with the Fagervik’s very impressive decorations and entertainment. Good food, good music, good dancing, and loads of people there to chat with. Best of all it’s only 6 floors above where we live, so it’s easy to stumble home afterwards I was pretty much drained by the time we went home, after two nights of staying out late and having fun.

I think it’s funny how at a lot of social gatherings we go to people still get a kick out of Cindy and I being Americans living abroad, and the fact that we’re not being total rednecks :p

Last night was the Canadian Ball. It was a fairly lively event, lots of playful jabs at us Americans, some good clean Canadian humor (is there any other kind of Canadian humor?), and some quite delicious food. Salmon, turkey with all the “fixin’s,” and a dessert medley. Cindy as usual looked stunning in her dress, and the hair/makeup combo particularly made me think of her as a wild creature that came to dance the night away. Dance dance dance we did, unfortunately “happy cat ran out of happy” towards the end and I couldn’t keep up with the activities – we left around midnight, and as soon as the tux was off I promptly passed out in bed. Oh yeah, I won two tickets to Phuket! Least I know what I’ll be doing for vacation early next year.

Below are pictures I took from the event. Cindy has some at her Facebook page