Arrived in Singapore
All right, I know you're not supposed to get Turkish food in Singapore - but I've never had Turkish food before and I was curious. And it was tasty (kinda like Greek food, but... different). And I was hungry. Sunday afternoon, and it's the first real meal I'd had since Thursday night - or if you don't think happy hour specials have actual nutritional value, Thursday lunch at GOSCON. 3 airplane meals and a Tokyo airport bowl of noodles don't quite cut it for my appetite.
I will say once again that Asian airlines have way better food than American ones (when steamed vegetables and rice steam more inside plastic containers, they stay good; when beef and noodles steam inside plastic containers, they just get gross), plus real silverware, and drinks. My first time trying plum wine; it's... fascinating, but I'm not sure I'll do that again. The alcohol did finally help me sleep on the plane (as intended), so that was nice; trying to get myself to sit still for the better part of 36 hours goes just about as well as you'd expect, and my layovers consisted of me running through the airport terminals (in Texas, with my laptop open to the SLOBs meeting channel and cursing flights that start boarding before your connecting flight has landed - I did make it, though - and in Tokyo, just running).
So I'm in Singapore. I left the house in Maryland at 3am and watched the sun rise in DC on Friday morning, watched it set in Tokyo, found my way to the hotel at Robertson Quay ("quay" rhymes with "key," not "way," as I'd supposed) and staggered into my room at 3am. 48 hours, or really 36 because of time differences. Then I tried to let my exhaustion combat my ohboy I'm in SINGAPORE! adrenaline, and two hours later, exhaustion won.
Now I'm sitting down and trying to be responsible-like and prep for next week, and there's still an undercurrent of ohboy! ohboy! that's probably going to be in the background of all my thoughts for the entire week. (Come to think of it, that's usually the background music for my brain in general. It's just a little louder when I travel.) It's muggy and steamy outside and the second downpour in 2 hours has just finished, and I love this climate; it feels like the Philippines, but with air that's more hospitable to respiration.
Right then! Time to prep.