For my nephew, on his birthday

What do you send your nephew to celebrate his fourth birthday when you're halfway around the world? Why, something created from local materials (and his uncle's curious hobbies), of course!

Happy birthday, Asa!

Love,

Eric and Julie



Made with Final Cut Pro, Voice Candy, Single Framer (thanks, Zach!), some Pangkor Island sand, stones and sticks, and a recording of children playing gamelan at a temple in Padangbai, Bali, Indonesia.

Having seconds in Singapore

Ah, Singapore.

How many times have I expressed shock at the continual abundance of this journey? Our time in Bali was so enchanting, I wondered how we'd manage to leave. In a way, it helped to have an unplanned night in Kuta when we couldn't fly out standby on an earlier flight, as we'd hoped. One night in Kuta — the bustling, touristy wasteland of marauding Western vacationers adjacent to the international airport — was memorable (our first durian, and a spotlit, nighttime surfing competition), but plenty.



So, we left Indonesia for Singapore, after paying the airport tax on our excess overcharge fee. (Seriously, I'm all about having the tourist dollar support the local economy, but you won't believe how many extra trips to the ATM at the airport were needed to pay all the departure fees! It didn't help that our very cheap and otherwise excellent AirAsia flight came with zero flexibility, and did not include charges that other carriers build into their ticket prices.) In any case, with the aid of some helpful and (thankfully!) friendly customs officers, we forked over the necessary dough and boarded the plane. To Singapore!

Singapore impresses, right out of the gate. Like the whole country, the airport is famously tidy and well organized, and the public transportation system is, frankly, unparalleled. (I'm prepared to ruffle feathers on this point among the denizens of New York City and London. In our week in Singapore, we took trains and buses all over the city, and not once had to change buses or walk more than a block at either end of the trip. Combine that with the fact that buses run so frequently, our longest wait was, I think, 10 minutes. Most often, it was a minute or two. Freakishly awesome, Singaporean public transportation.)

It's true that one is also confronted quickly with signs of Singapore's strict social code, whether the posted signs warning of various offenses and their fines...



...or the anti-terrorism audio and video broadcasts on most trains and buses, warning riders to maintain vigilant watch for suspicious persons (which, as in post-9/11 America, have a cumulative effect that elevates anxiety, if not outright terrorizes those who hear them). These are the downsides of Singapore people often focus on. For us, they're little more than a footnote on an otherwise amazing experience.

Culturally, it is quickly apparent that Singapore is a confluence of Malay, Chinese and Indian peoples and histories. It is also heavily influenced by the West, although for want of a better metaphor, this feels a bit like the clothes Singapore wears, rather than its body (or bodies). Its vibrant diversity and distinct neighborhoods make for some incredible travel experiences. People say that Singaporeans' favorite pastimes are shopping and eating. We participated in both, but the latter much more extensively.

Owing in part to the politics surrounding the greening of the Singapore River, many of the city's historic food vendors (which previously operated out of little carts along or boats on the water) were relocated into dozens (hundreds?) of hawker centers dispersed throughout the city. Think of a hawker center as a food court on steroids, each with dozens of vendors selling made-to-order meals, most of which cost just a buck or two. You grab a seat at one of the numbered, communal tables, approach the vendor whose fare you want to try, place your order and provide your table number. Minutes later, your food is delivered to your table and exchanged for payment.



The process, though energetic and enjoyable to behold, is nothing compared to the product. The food we sampled at hawker centers throughout the city ranged from the excellent to the sublime. Julie joked that she was going to start having five meals a day to allow us to sample more of the variety available! We quickly realized that we could have every meal of our stay at the first hawker center we visited, just blocks from our hotel, and still not run out of delicious options. It is a place teeming with compelling food.



We sampled some of Singapore's best-loved dishes, including fish head curry, chili crab, char kway teow mee (fried noodles), laksa (a coconut-milk-based soup with noodles, prawns and cockles), a stunning Indian veggie platter, roti prata (an Indian fried bread with onions and, in my case, scrambled eggs), dosas, sardine murtabak, and a range of dishes whose names I don't know or can't remember and whose flavors I can't forget. We also had a broad sample of bao (stuffed rice-flour buns) and dim sum, and some of the finest coffee I've tasted, sweetened with condensed milk. Desserts also proved memorable, especially the slab of ice cream served between two slices of white bread (!) or wafers. Truly, some of the most amazing food experiences of my life were found in this city. Foodies, buy your tickets now.

If the food was the star of the show, there were other captivating attractions, too. We took in a great exhibit at the National Museum of Singapore... about food! The Museum's Living Galleries, covering food, film, fashion and photography, were excellent (especially the first two in that list), as was the Asian Civilizations Museum. In the latter, we encountered the complex, fascinating, tangled history of the clash, intersection, and melding of people living in this part of the world. More precisely, we just scratched the surface, a humbling experience to encounter dozens of civilizations I know nothing about, which have had profound impacts on the shape of things in this part of the world today. Abundance of a different sort, I suppose, that the sweep of history is so broad, but also so unfathomably deep.

As for Singapore's other favorite pastime, we did engage in some commerce as well, seeking to replace Julie's busted point-and-shoot camera with the latest model of the one Linda let us use in Alaska. I dunno, folks, I think Julie must have been trying to flirt with me, too, taking me to Sim Lim Square — a famous six-story hawker-center equivalent for electronics — on our first day in Singapore!



Filtering through the blitzkrieg of flashing signs, conflicting advice and mercurial price-quotes proved to be quite a project, but a rewarding one. She came away with a new cam, and it provided a different kind of lens (sorry) into Singapore. The art of haggling is practiced in a unique way here, with some vendors telling us to so much as shove off ("you'll find better deals upstairs"), others saying their neighbors would try to con us, and still others changing the price every time we asked.

We spent longer (7 days) in the city than we'd originally planned, mainly so that we could obtain an entry visa from the Indian embassy in Singapore. Many travelers we've met along the way suggested that three or four days was enough. For my part, a week felt like just the beginning of coming to know this place. In another common refrain, I look forward to our next visit, and spending more time in this unforgettable city.

An addendum for the family doctors

A few more words about the final steps my Mom took in completing her doctoral degree.

My Mom's dissertation, on how schools can apply Total Quality Management and strategic planning techniques to improve student learning, is peppered with incisive observations about the state of education, and the challenges and opportunities for improving it. She quotes Andy Hargreaves' succinct description of how important this work is, that "education is the greatest gatekeeper of opportunity and a powerful distributor of life chances."

It was great fun for me to read this document, codifying the knowledge and experience earned through decades of work as an educator. In discussing how educational reform efforts are necessarily situated within a large social context, she writes:

A school is affected from the outside by the stability, support, and socioeconomic status of the community. A community in turmoil is less likely to lend support and prioritize education as a value.

In describing how a school's culture and process for decision-making can impact the ultimate success of school improvement efforts, she highlights how critical it is that all the people involved have a shared understanding of the process and its importance, and what happens without it.

What can easily be construed as resistance to change may in fact be uncertainty of the task or training needed to build capacity. Seldom is the desire to change problematic in a school when the need is evident, the process is clear and relevant and the belief is there that it will benefit students.

A dissertation culminates in a defense, the term of art for a committee review of the material including an oral interview by the committee. From the stories I've heard, it seems these free-form, no-holds-barred investigations of the material covered by the dissertation often go in unexpected directions, as committee members might be interested in hearing the candidate expound on a passing remark on page 57.

It sounds like my Mom's defense was a rich and intense discussion, giving her an opportunity to demonstrate her broad, confident knowledge of her material. The unexpected part came when after the committee's deliberations were complete, she was asked to follow the committee throughout the halls of the department, as her advisor rang an antique school bell — hear-ye, hear-ye style — introducing her to all of the staff and faculty as the department's newest Ph.D.. For all the pomp and circumstance of a commencement (which she got to experience the next day), so I love the image being invited into the ranks through the ringing of an old school bell, and striding the halls with those who have conferred the distinction. Once again, Ma, way to go!

I have also just learned that my aunt Kim successfully defended her dissertation yesterday. Congrats, Dr. Kim!

Much occasion for family pride, indeed.

Buttons bursting

The title would be apt for our time in Singapore, the result of grazing at every conceivable opportunity on that city's amazingly diverse, abundant, inexpensive and delicious street food. But, in fact, we did a lot of walking, and it's pretty healthy stuff, so the buttons of our midsections — for the moment, anyway — remain intact.

No, this is not a post about our time in Singapore, nor our first impressions of Malaysia. Those will come. This is a post about family pride.

Tomorrow, after the considerable years of effort that the title always implies, my Mom receives her doctorate from the Department of Educational Policy and Administration at the University of Minnesota.

Congratulations, Dr. Mom!

I cannot fathom is how she managed to squeeze time for her research and writing between her way-more-than-full-time gig as an elementary school principal, her role as family matriarch, her primary care-giving for my sister, her avid grandmotherhood, her support for the whole damn clan and all the gazillion other interests calling to her — but I have evidence that most of it took place between the hours of 4 and 6 a.m.. No, I'm not kidding.

Mom, you're an inspiration for your persistence and dedication, and also for your ability to balance all of the many demands pulling at your attention. Kudos for hanging in there through the inevitable set-backs, changing priorities and plain ol' passage of time, and crossing the finish line with such style! Hooray!


On the list of buffo family accomplishments, my Mom is sharing the stage right now with my amazingly talented sister-in-law, whose well-loved writing has appeared, for the first time, in book form!



Drink This: Wine Made Simple, Dara's guide to wine, hinges on the dramatic, democratic premise that the most important thing about your experience of wine is — BEHOLD! — your experience of wine! Rather than sending you rushing for a thesaurus or fumbling for obscure imagery ("ah, this one has hints of reading Rilke during summer rains"), her radical idea is to help you get to know your own tastes and preferences better. Wicked! The experience of wine, expressed in the most important tongue of all: yours!

The book has been getting rave reviews (turns out those James Beard awards weren't for nuthin'!) here and here and here and lots of other places. Check it out!

So, hats off, Mom and Dara! These are big milestones, worthy of much celebration. A toast, a toast! To you!

In pictures

Judged by any reasonable measure of consumption, Julie and I are cinephiles of the "frequent and vigorous" variety. Our regular routine in a more abiding abode would typically involve a weekly trip to an art house or one of our favorite second-run cinemas. Enter the trip.

To our pleasant surprise, cinema has also been appreciated in our destinations to date. Whether spending time with Tony at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, screening Up! in 3D, or visiting the WETA Workshop in New Zealand, we've been able to keep the cinematic flame alive and aloft. But who knew that Ubud, Bali would offer so many memorable movie-going experiences?

It began with a chance encounter on an evening walk up Monkey Forest Road, past a sign hawking what we could only take to be a joke:



Lord of the Rings 4?! What Halloween-costumed, Ren-fest-inspired, lilt-uttering massacre of all things Tolkien could this be? Natch, we had to go. (The short answer: a fan film, yes, but one with surprisingly high production values. If only their scripted dialogue hadn't tried so, so hard to sound like the original trilogy, it might have been quite engrossing. Note for future fan-film makers: your target audience already knows the original scripts too well to let you get away with reusing existing dialogue in new contexts, without killing the buzz.)

Later that evening, we passed one of Ubud's many DVD chop shops, huge storefronts packed to the gills with dubiously-obtained video, amazed to discover films available on DVD for US $1.50 that have not yet even reached the cinema! From the little I actually saw of it, Where the Wild Things Are appears to be a pretty incredible film. Do you suppose the sudden appearance of a tiny silhouetted figure on the lower bounds of the screen, walking toward stage left, is some inexplicable easter egg added by director Spike Jonze or co-screenwriter Dave Eggers? Or could it just be someone exiting the theater? I admire their daring choice to include audio of real children watching the film, particularly the high-pitched urgent query right at the end, asking Mama "Is it over now?"

Ha. While this is not the only bootlegged movie I've seen, it was easily the worst made. So, naturally, how could we pass up an opportunity to see 2012 the day before its US premiere?



Thankfully, this is a visual movie, so the absence of audible dialog did not detract from the expected apocalyptic images. There were some muddled but satisfying low-end reverberations that made it through the speakers whenever something large was being destroyed by something even larger, which was enough to reinforce the idea that "this can't be good." Besides, there's only so much dramatic tension John Cusack's love interests can really sustain for me. I decided if Cusack's character had motto, it should be: "Unlucky in love, lucky in class-C driving." But you judge for yourself.

Our cinematic highlight to date of the trip -- for me, anyway -- was attending the fabulous Ubud "flim" [sic] club, a group of Indonesian and expat cinephiles who gather weekly at the home of their gregarious host, Artur, a Polish Swede who with his wife and their two kids have made movie nights an important part of their extended stays in Bali. Artur found me on CouchSurfing, invited me to screen my own cinematic pride-and-joy, Friction, and generally made it an irresistible and unforgettable night. The company of smart, interesting fellow travelers and an... intoxicating, home-brewed concoction known as the Magic Coconut were potent icing on the cake. With some help from said company, I even managed to procure the ingredients for my signature caliente popcorn, but alas, the kernels would not pop! We screened the hilarious and chaotic Black Cat, White Cat as our main feature, followed with Friction and closed the night with trailers of the films to be screened at flim clubs to come. It was a joyful and light-hearted movie club experience, something I've missed having in my life for several years. I only wish we'd been in Ubud more than just the one week!

We are in Singapore now -- the time has flown with so many diverting scenic and culinary experiences -- and we have learned that we have more movie fun ahead in Kuala Lumpur, where purchasing movie tickets seems as complex as a tax form, with prices varying based on the time of day, day of week, size of seat, location and, naturally, availability of restrooms. It should prove memorable!