Indeed.

(too small? click image for big)

Whatever else you may say about Singapore, you can't say that they didn't warn you

Gum is illegal; the punishment for drug possession is death by hanging...Singapore boggles the mind a little bit, and going directly to the shining skyscraper wonderland of Singapore from the absolute chaos of the capital of the World's Largest Democracy scrambles the brain all the more. What can be said of Singapore? Take a lot of oil money and a competent, benevolent dictator and you get a equatorial city with drinkable tap water, no malaria, and acres of delicious street food that can be enjoyed without subsequent dire consequences. Cabs have working seatbelts. Everyone speaks English because schools in Singapore are English medium. In short, Singapore is paradise: so gorgeously perfect that you kind of forget that it may be a tiny bit dull.


















Unless you trespass, which apparently has very exciting consequences.

This just in from a Paharganj internet cafe....

Knitcrit checks in to assure her - ahem - elite group of regular readers that other than her apartment's internet connection, all is well in Delhi. The connection iteself went down on August first, and after many calls to the landlord and the service provider, Knitcrit grew weary of pushing the boulder up the mountain and just gave up.

I might have tried a little harder to get things back on line were it not for the fact that our upstairs neighbor, in whose apartment our router and modem are located, is rather eccentric. By eccentric of course I mean completely insane, which itself would still be a manageable situation if he weren't an insane man with a vision. The vision involves merging his current business with what he hopes will be his legacy. The current business, the exact name of which I do not want to use because I don't want him to find this page (even completely insane people have feelings), involves scanning the client's fingerprint. After this, a complex mathematical calculation is performed, from which a person's future is determined. The legacy-in-the-making involves opening a college where students will be fingerprinted - then, of course, their natural aptitutes will be calculated. It's like the SAT but without all the tiresome multiple choice (and possibly just about as accurate as the SAT, but I digress...) Then the student will be placed in an appropriate course of study. All students, however, will study the art of communicating with animals, which so far as I can tell involves singing into a machine that our upstairs neighbor has invented. So, like I said, the crazy I can handle, but because our neighbor has figured out that both Todd and I teach on the college level, he really wants us to join the faculty of his college. Which means that every time we went upstairs to try to solve the connection problem we had to figure out some way to escape a discussion of what we might contribute to his institution. Which became very tiresome. Hence this dispach from a sweaty backpacker internet cafe.

Tune in about a week from now, when Knitcrit and Todd will be in glorious Singapore, swimming in our friend's condo's pool and enjoying tasty cocktails and a working internet connection.