My feet hurt already.

Got in last night at just about midnight local time, which was...I don't even know what time in Seattle. I'd set my watch to SG time just after takeoff at Sea-Tac, so I was already pretty adjusted to thinking that it was just about midnight, regardless of how long I'd actually been awake. On the itinerary, the flight from Narita to Singapore was 4-1/2 hours, but that didn't mention the two-hour time difference, actually making it another 6-1/2 hour flight. (SEA-Narita was 9-1/2...oof.) Mark and I got the bulkhead row from Seattle, so had all kinds of legroom and nobody in our lap the whole flight, which was about as good as it gets without a free upgrde to business class. We had a regular row from there, and although my window seat was kinda cool, I was most uncomfortable. We were seated near everyone else, though. (A blurry Mark, Monique, and me) I was intending on not sleeping, but I quickly found myself at a point where I couldn't focus on my book, and had zero desire to wear my headphones for one more minute, and by default ended up sleeping for at least half the flight, if not more. But at least it kept me from driving Mark nuts trying to stay comfortable.

We were met at the airport by Nicole, our liason from Esplanade, and a shuttle bus, which brought us in to town. Got settled in, wrangled with the laptop for a while (LAN in the room is S$.85/minute, which is highway robbery, but the wireless card was causing some bootup freakout, and so I gave in, checking email quickly and getting offline as soon as I could) and finally sacked out around 2am when I realized the room was swimming a bit. I woke up pretty regularly during the night, feeling like I hadn't yet gotten to sleep, though I obviously had since another hour had passed.

Finally got up around 7:30 (half hour before the alarm), checked the view out the window, showered and went down for the complimentary buffet breakfast. I'd already taken some depressing-looking bacon and stuff when I discovered the huge pot of congee. I'm pretty sure I'd dreamed about going out for congee in Chinatown.

Andrew & Llyssa showed up while I was eating, so we all chatted and ate and generally tried to wake up, and then took a walk over to Boat Quay and around the colonial core. Lots of cool buildings, with a bunch of interesting juxtapositions of colonial vs. modern. Also stumbed across a really keen Dali sculpture.
Andrew & Llyssa
Me

We had about an hour to kill before meeting Nicole for a tour of the facility and some orientation, and while they headed back to the hotel I wandered over to Clark Quay, and ulitmately sat down in the shade and spent about 45 minutes sketching. I'm hoping I can take some time like that every morning; I don't get into that kind of space often enough. It was nice, regardless of how the drawing itself came out.

Esplanade is a sprawling facility, with a 2500-seat concert hall, a maybe 1200-seat theatre, the 250-seat recital studio where we'll be (with a very boring entryway), and scads of other stuff, like random art installations. There is an arts library, rather like the Performing Arts branch of the NYPL at Lincoln Center, a couple galleries, and a green room that looks like a swanky restaurant. And apparently it wouldn't be Singapore if there weren't a bunch of places to shop as well. The building is pretty stunning to look at, though, and keeps popping up as you walk around.

From the Esplanade Nicole led us to the food court at Raffles City mall (nearby), where we all were overwhelmed by the selection and cheapness -- I got a massive bowl of deer, wok-fried with ginger & green onion and served over rice, with a side of soup, for S$4.50, which is maybe $3.00 US. It was really good, although sort of sadly basically ended up being dinner as well.

Just before leaving the mall, we hit the ticket counter to grab a pair of seats for tonight's show of Ba Wang Bie Ji, presented by the China Blue Sky Modern Drama Troupe, part of the Arts Fest. It's basically a stylish telling of the story Farewel My Concubine, and staged in what they described as a fusion of modern theatre and Bejing Opera style. It sounded cool. Monique was game, and so was Andrew until just before we bought tickets...which, as it turned out, was good, because we were told that there were only two seats left for the whole show anyway. So M and I nabbed them.

Nicole left us after that, and the four of us headed to the Asian Civilizations Museum, back down the street in the colonial area. It was free admission today, and there is a special exhibition, "Saris to Sarongs," focusing on the historic textile trade between India and Indonesia. It wowed us all with dozens of amazing pieces of 3, 4, 500-year old fabric. Sounds odd, I know, but it was keen. the rest of the museum looked fascinating, too, very well presented, so we'll likely go back later in the week.

Monique and I caught the free shuttle out to the university where the show was playing, and mostly enjoyed the show. It was very stylish, but was definitely guilty of trying too hard. I commented afterwards that it felt like they were trying to be cinematic with some of the staging, and M replied that it was more like television -- similar, but not nearly as polished. They even re-enacted key tableaus during the curtain call, just like rolling the credits on a movie. It was good to see, though, as it seemed like one of those almost-compulsory opportunities, begging to be taken. The biggest complaint? It wasn't staged with a balcony in mind, and in fact even the English supertitles (it was in Cantonese) were partially blocked by a speaker for the last couple rows...up where we were. We both managed to move lower, and though we were then way off to the side, it was far better to know what was going on.

All the food stands we knew about had closed by the time we got back, so I (sadly) got a steamed bun and a soymilk from the 7-11 and called it dinner. Or something like dinner. I was still mostly full from lunch.

Tomorrow we tech 52 Pickup during the day, but have the evening off, so have plans to catch one or two of the free performances along the waterfront, weather permitting, possibly followed by a venture to Raffles for one of the legendary Singapore Slings. I'm pretty tired now, though, so here it ends...for now.