Sunday, November 30, 2008
8 Days?
Hmmm, how did THAT happen?
Well, the last week has been a busy one, though I've taken some time (not much, but some) to chill this weekend.
Sunday was a day to catch up on some things around town, then meet Alan (not to be confused with Allan) to see Bpdy of Lies (not a bad picture) and try out the pizza place across the street from my apartment (yummy seafood pizza!). Alan's a friend of friends that I met a couple weeks ago and a nice guy who can carry on an intelligent conversation and is fun to hang out with.
Monday night I was off to the gym and then got to welcome DanielHenry and Froggy, along with Ben and Nicholas (whom I hadn't met before but am now glad I did!) to Singapore. It was nice to welcome them to MY city for a change (even though, as DanielHenry points out, I still have a US passport and only live here temporarily). They were in town for Kylie's concert Tuesday so we met up at a cute little bar called Clinic where the seats are wheelchairs and hospital beds and you can get drinks served in IV bottles and blood bags. Tourists stopped to take photos with us.
Tuesday night I went running at school then got back and met up with a fellow from online for a couple drinks, a Singaporean who has lived in US for 14 years and is back for his twice-a-year family visit. He was trying to find out about gay life here so I told him we could meet and I'd pass along my wisdom. I love the fact that I can provide info to a native. Also, he'll be in DC next week so I gave him all the gay bar info he was looking for.
Wednesday night I got home from work and my friend KK came over. he was headed to Cambodia the next day and since I'm thinking of going to Siam Reap next month we went over his travel plans so I could get an idea of where to go and how to get around. He gets back today so I'm hoping for a debriefing before I have to finalize my plans.
Thursday I was at the gym again, then headed out for Thanksgiving. Allan had arranged dinner with me and 4 other expats (one American, one Canadian, and two Brits) at the local Hyatt, which was offering a traditional (and somewhat high-class) dinner. A nice time was had filled with good food, though I'm pretty sure that since I had one drink and others were splitting bottles of wine, I ended up subsidizing them when we split the bill evenly.
Friday night I relaxed for a bit...got back from work, fixed a little dinner here, downloaded a couple TV shows from iTunes. I've found that I can't access Hulu.com or Fox.com outside the US, so if anyone has suggestions about how to find Heroes, Family Guy, American Dad, and Simpsons without buying from iTunes, please let me know. I later wandered out for a drink but made it a short night...one drink, one hour, and I was headed home (it's nice living only 5 minutes from the bar).
Saturday I ran errands during the day then went to the World AIDS Day Concert with Alan. There were half a dozen local groups, including a singer named Stephanie Sun who's not well known in the US but who people around here definitely know. The concert was actually sponsored by the government, which sounds cool (can you imagine the US government sponsoring a concert to educate people about HIV/AIDS and discourage discrimination about afflicted people?), but I talked to the producer later and he said the government folks actually had problems with things like mentioning the word "condom" (that finally got back in) or saying anything about gay people (that never made it into the script). Craziness.
Oh, and yeah...work's going great. I started with 13 students, but ended up with 24 for the term. Either I'm popular, or something else got cancelled.
As you can see, I'm keeping busy. Next week will be a little slower. Not much, but a little.
And I'm really, really, really going to try to post more than once a week. :P
Well, the last week has been a busy one, though I've taken some time (not much, but some) to chill this weekend.
Sunday was a day to catch up on some things around town, then meet Alan (not to be confused with Allan) to see Bpdy of Lies (not a bad picture) and try out the pizza place across the street from my apartment (yummy seafood pizza!). Alan's a friend of friends that I met a couple weeks ago and a nice guy who can carry on an intelligent conversation and is fun to hang out with.
Monday night I was off to the gym and then got to welcome DanielHenry and Froggy, along with Ben and Nicholas (whom I hadn't met before but am now glad I did!) to Singapore. It was nice to welcome them to MY city for a change (even though, as DanielHenry points out, I still have a US passport and only live here temporarily). They were in town for Kylie's concert Tuesday so we met up at a cute little bar called Clinic where the seats are wheelchairs and hospital beds and you can get drinks served in IV bottles and blood bags. Tourists stopped to take photos with us.
Tuesday night I went running at school then got back and met up with a fellow from online for a couple drinks, a Singaporean who has lived in US for 14 years and is back for his twice-a-year family visit. He was trying to find out about gay life here so I told him we could meet and I'd pass along my wisdom. I love the fact that I can provide info to a native. Also, he'll be in DC next week so I gave him all the gay bar info he was looking for.
Wednesday night I got home from work and my friend KK came over. he was headed to Cambodia the next day and since I'm thinking of going to Siam Reap next month we went over his travel plans so I could get an idea of where to go and how to get around. He gets back today so I'm hoping for a debriefing before I have to finalize my plans.
Thursday I was at the gym again, then headed out for Thanksgiving. Allan had arranged dinner with me and 4 other expats (one American, one Canadian, and two Brits) at the local Hyatt, which was offering a traditional (and somewhat high-class) dinner. A nice time was had filled with good food, though I'm pretty sure that since I had one drink and others were splitting bottles of wine, I ended up subsidizing them when we split the bill evenly.
Friday night I relaxed for a bit...got back from work, fixed a little dinner here, downloaded a couple TV shows from iTunes. I've found that I can't access Hulu.com or Fox.com outside the US, so if anyone has suggestions about how to find Heroes, Family Guy, American Dad, and Simpsons without buying from iTunes, please let me know. I later wandered out for a drink but made it a short night...one drink, one hour, and I was headed home (it's nice living only 5 minutes from the bar).
Saturday I ran errands during the day then went to the World AIDS Day Concert with Alan. There were half a dozen local groups, including a singer named Stephanie Sun who's not well known in the US but who people around here definitely know. The concert was actually sponsored by the government, which sounds cool (can you imagine the US government sponsoring a concert to educate people about HIV/AIDS and discourage discrimination about afflicted people?), but I talked to the producer later and he said the government folks actually had problems with things like mentioning the word "condom" (that finally got back in) or saying anything about gay people (that never made it into the script). Craziness.
Oh, and yeah...work's going great. I started with 13 students, but ended up with 24 for the term. Either I'm popular, or something else got cancelled.
As you can see, I'm keeping busy. Next week will be a little slower. Not much, but a little.
And I'm really, really, really going to try to post more than once a week. :P
Labels: Bars, Friends, Living in SG, Running
Comments:
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wow~ a busy busy man! you know, it could be your look that is drawing all the students to your lecture. ;)
there was quite a gay cast at the concert. and there were plenty of condom messages. there's even a yellow t-shirt 'Cover me' for the condom message. don't know where you got your news from
# posted by 
: 8:53 PM
: 8:53 PM
Froggy: I never assume people want me for my looks, only for my brain and my heart (and my nipple-pinching!)
Anonymous: welcome to my blog. As I mentioned in my post, to answer your last question, I got my news from the show's producer when we chatted a couple hours after the concert. He was telling me about all the hassles they had putting this together, such as overcoming the initial resistance to the word "condom" (which, as I pointed out in the post, did get back into the message). As he put it "we were going to talk about the ABC's of prevention, and they told us we couldn't say 'condom.' How can you talk about the AB's of prevention?" Bravo to the producers for their hard work convincing the agency to give them more freedom. I should add he wasn't criticizing the government, but merely pointing out the problems of dealing with a government bureaucracy when the government is trying to take a big step forward, as this concert was. As for gay people making it into the script, the word "gay" was uttered once that I remember, in one of the videos, when an actor said "it isn't a straight disease, it isn't a gay disease." Incidentally, that dance number about the sexual connections between all the different people...did you notice you never heard "I'm (man's name) and I slept with (man's name)"? That WAS in the voiceover, but they were told to remove it. As for gay people in the cast (I counted 3 people, though perhaps some of the dancers or members of StrikeForce fit that category), I seem to recall the emcee telling Stephanie Sun about "my girlfriend, Terry," and how "he always plays your music when we're driving." When the emcee at an AIDS benefit feels he has to refer to his male partner as his girlfriend, then yes, I'd say we've effectively left the issue of homosexuality out of the script.
Despite the problems with putting it on, I will say again what I said in my post, that it was very cool of the government of Singapore to sponsor this, something I cannot imagine the US government ever doing. And also, yay to all the performers...did you know they all did this for free???
And again, Anonymous, welcome to my blog. Feel free to introduce yourself.
Anonymous: welcome to my blog. As I mentioned in my post, to answer your last question, I got my news from the show's producer when we chatted a couple hours after the concert. He was telling me about all the hassles they had putting this together, such as overcoming the initial resistance to the word "condom" (which, as I pointed out in the post, did get back into the message). As he put it "we were going to talk about the ABC's of prevention, and they told us we couldn't say 'condom.' How can you talk about the AB's of prevention?" Bravo to the producers for their hard work convincing the agency to give them more freedom. I should add he wasn't criticizing the government, but merely pointing out the problems of dealing with a government bureaucracy when the government is trying to take a big step forward, as this concert was. As for gay people making it into the script, the word "gay" was uttered once that I remember, in one of the videos, when an actor said "it isn't a straight disease, it isn't a gay disease." Incidentally, that dance number about the sexual connections between all the different people...did you notice you never heard "I'm (man's name) and I slept with (man's name)"? That WAS in the voiceover, but they were told to remove it. As for gay people in the cast (I counted 3 people, though perhaps some of the dancers or members of StrikeForce fit that category), I seem to recall the emcee telling Stephanie Sun about "my girlfriend, Terry," and how "he always plays your music when we're driving." When the emcee at an AIDS benefit feels he has to refer to his male partner as his girlfriend, then yes, I'd say we've effectively left the issue of homosexuality out of the script.
Despite the problems with putting it on, I will say again what I said in my post, that it was very cool of the government of Singapore to sponsor this, something I cannot imagine the US government ever doing. And also, yay to all the performers...did you know they all did this for free???
And again, Anonymous, welcome to my blog. Feel free to introduce yourself.
who's the show producer you are refering to? your information is not entirely correct.
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# posted by : 6:52 PM
: 6:52 PM << Home
