1) Theemidhi - a Hindu festival in which devotees walk over hot coals.
2) Homesickness - the three-month mark is infamous as the typical onset of this phenomenon. My family got together for Thanksgiving. Mom posted the pictures on Facebook. School ramped up, and Singapore suddenly got less fun. The The Vinyl Cafe did an episode from Via Rail's cross-country train "The Canadian". Same route I took last summer, same sights, same observations about the people you meet and the experience of witnessing the truly spectacular country we call home.
3) Penang - Alisaur and I went to this crazy little island in Malaysia where we helped the locals (including a bunch of dudes with spears stuck through their faces) pull the 9 Emperor Gods float to the water and send off the gods for another year. We rode really terrible 10-ringgit bikes, saw way too many temples, ate some really spectacular asam laksa, used the pool and sauna at a posh hotel (shhh! don't tell anyone!) and went parasailing on a very touristy beach.
4) Kuala Lumpur - I took the train with two of the ladies from home (I do love me some trains). We went to the Skybar in the Traders Hotel for some great views of the Petronas Towers but split up for most of the weekend while they shopped and I...didn't shop. I visited the Batu caves (a Hindu temple inside a gorgeous natural cave) and tried my hand at batik painting. At the Kompleks Kraf, the government-sponsored art centre, I got caught in the rain and spent half an hour chatting with a lovely couple who raise "the world's smallest chickens", a Malaysian variety. They run a shop selling watercolour and pewter representations of their chickens. They gave me a glossy brochure...about their chickens. Then we had a great conversation about law and religion in Malaysia. After I left their shop I met a woodcarver who is passionate about noses - the great diversity of noses around the world. He pointed out his different carvings - that's an Irish nose, that's an Acehan nose, that's a Malay nose. I happen to like noses myself, so I was a fan.
5) I am currently back in Singapore, teaching myself about world trade law for the purposes of writing a research paper on it. Life is less fun, but within a week I will be done both of my research papers and chilling in Bali. That's what's getting me through.
6) Photos to come - they're up on Facebook but it's a bit more labout-intensive to get them onto Blogger and put them in the right places. I can't justify spending any more time on this right now, not when I have 3000 words to write and buckets of edits and citations to complete. But soon!
