The first ever

This event was created by the International Olympic Committee and it is modeled after the normal Olympics except the participants must be between the ages 14-18.  Events include swimming, diving, archery, gymnastics, basketball, fencing, rowing, judo, tennis, wrestling and many others.  They will hold a summer Olympics every 4 years, and a winter Olympics every 4 years and stagger them just as the adult Olympics.   The 2012 Winter Youth Olympics will be held in Innsbruck, Austria and will include alpine and nordic skiing, skating, luge, snowboarding and many others.

The Unites States sent 80 proud young Americans to this inaugural 2010 Summer Youth Olympics, but virtually no one back in the USA even knew about it.  There has been a virtual black-out on U.S. news about the event.  CNN, Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS are not covering it, and I have not been able to find one link online to any press coverage by any of these American media networks.  The only article I found on CNN.com was one that was entitled “Iran bans girls’ football team from Youth Olympics over uniform”.  Oh, IRAN… of course!  But that’s it?  Not a mention about our own team, or those of 203 other countries?  These kids deserve a lot more!

USA Youth Olympians

So while American news has decided these young athletes do not deserve any attention, our Embassy staff came out in force to welcome the 2010 Olympic Torch runner, and our Ambassador and Deputy Chief of Mission visited Team USA to show our support.

Torch Runner by the American Embassy Singapore

US Ambassador visits Team USA

- Morning:  Warm, and humid.  Bright sunshine.
- Afternoon:  Hot, with heavy rain showers, perhaps two or three.
- Evening:  Hot and very humid.

This is the weather here every single day, all year long.   It’s like ground-hog day.  No wonder it’s so green and lush.  A couple of days ago I was walking home from work after an intense rain shower.  I looked down at a culvert were rain water from the street was pouring out into a gutter.  It looked odd.. until I realized that what was sop strange was how clean the water was.  It was like drinking water!  I’ve seen water that clean in fast moving brooks in New Hampshire, but never from a street culvert!  The huge rainfall here (8 feet per year), combined with how well the Singaporeans take care not to trash their city, makes the streets very clean indeed.

Anyways, if you visit here be prepared for walking in an open sauna.  Eye glasses will fog up as soon as you exit a bus, or any building in the city.  The dense hot air will punch you in chest.

I need a break.

I just booked a flight to Sydney Australia for a week.   I depart on the 9th of April after work.  A few days on Bondi Beach should help!

The weather was quite warm, probably low ’80s at midnight, with the humidity around 80%.  I spent about a 1/2 hour chatting with my sponsor, and he showed me around the apartment.  I have a lot to read, with a large packet of material on both the condo, appliances, Embassy guidelines for Singapore, and lots of brochures from the Singapore tourism office.   My sponsor is picking me up at 10 AM to take me to the Embassy so I can start in-processing, so I crawled off into bed and left everything in the suitcases.  The next morning I awoke to the sounds of unique bird calls, as my apartment is right next to the Singapore National Botanical Gardens.  I had a look around the condo grounds, and then got ready for my first day at the office.

U.S. Embassy, Singapore

The Embassy looks brand new, but that’s just because it was very well built, and well taken care of.  I have never been in a building with so much marble, except in DC.  It’s quite a beautiful place to work.

My office is (as it was in Pakistan) the Regional Security Office (RSO) and seems like a nice work environment.  We have a computer dedicated to playing music and a good sound system – something that is quite rare in the more secure areas of an Embassy – and I think the only such system in the whole building.  My boss told me to bring in as much music as I wanted and we’ll blast the place with tunes!  I like this place already!

I had shipped a bunch of boxes ahead of me, and they are all stacked up in a corner here.  Some have office junk from Pakistan, and then there’s a few boxes of dry goods from the USA that I shipped while in New England.  I also packed 2 large boxes of clothes so my suitcases would be lighter – but clothes that I wanted to be here before my normal airfreight from Pakistan arrives.  In theory, airfreight should get to our next destination long before e do, but the reality is that they often hold on to it until we actually show up at post, and then arrange to send it out.  It can take a few weeks to arrive, so I mail a bunch of items too, which always seems to work well.

Korean Chicken Noodle Soup

At lunch, I was taken to the nearest mall (3 minute walk) and introduced to the #1 method that Singaporeans eat out – the Hawker center.  These are an assortment of food stands inside “food courts” where a single family cooks specialty dishes, all from scratch.  Unlike the USA where mall food is pretty much the same from mall to mall all across the country, in Singapore there are thousands of hawker stands and each one if different.  The individual shop owners cook family recipes handed down from generation to generation, all cooked to order.  Prices are quite inexpensive  and my first taste of Singapore was Korean chicken noodle soup, which also had crab, beef, tofu, and an egg in it.  The cost, with rice and some kimchi was $4.50.  I’ll try more adventurous dishes later.

To drink, I enjoyed a fresh juice made from fresh mango’s, bananas, and pineapple.  The Singaporeans love fresh fruit, and fruit stands seem to be everywhere.  While they certainly serve cut up fruit (with many varieties I have never seen), they also all will be happy to turn them into juices or even smoothies.  I think for every person I saw drinking a soft drink, there was probably 30 to 40 who where drinking fresh juices.

I stayed at work all day, and only left when my boss left.  First impressions are important, and jet-lag was not too bad – I think a new office, new co-workers, and a new building were exciting enough to keep me awake.  Tomorrow may a bit tougher!

I decided to walk home, as it was a straight shot from home to the Embassy, and didn’t seem too far, plus, I had not yet bought a bus pass, nor do I have any idea yet how to use them.  In the Foreign Service, when we first arrive at a new post and have no clue where we are, what to eat, how to get around, etc… these first days are the most exciting for me!  Within a few days I will settle in to the rhythm here, and quickly get used to my surroundings.  The mystery will be gone.  I can’t peak for all Foreign Service members, but I LIVE for this feeling!  I feel so alive, and full of wonder, like a child on his first day to a zoo or amusement park.

My walk home

The walk home was an easy 20 minutes.  It took me past the Botanical gardens, and along a straight road to my apartment.  One nice thing here is that you don’t see any trash on the streets and sidewalks, not a cigarette butt, bottle cap, or anything except a few leaves.  The air is clean, and the amount of green has certainly surprised me!  I will admit though, the humidity here is nasty!  I walked just 20 minutes and was covered in sweat.  I hope I can acclimatize to this!

The next morning (Saturday), one of the first things I did was dig out my bathing suit from my suitcase and jump in the pool.  The outside temperature was about 88F an so this felt so good!  In the afternoon I’ll head downtown to learn how to use the bus and metro system and start to explore my new city.

The pool