2014 – The Chicken Scratches

Trip to Patagonia

by Pat & Ray WhydeDecember 17, 2014November 21, 2022

This coming Friday morning at 2 A.M., Pat and I fly out of Singapore for our trip to South America (Argentina and Chile and Patagonia), This is a trip we had planned last February, long before we knew about moving to Singapore. The flight goes to Doha, Qatar, and then to Buenos Aries – 30+ hours from the time the plane takes off from Singapore, until it lands in BA! The trip is organized by Overseas Adventure Travel (www.oattravel.com) and will be our first group tour (can’t count our trips with Kathy and Alan or John and Ruth), so we’re …

Hawker Centers (or Cooked Food Centers)

by Pat & Ray WhydeDecember 12, 2014November 17, 2023

Yesterday, Ray had the opportunity of talking to a good friend from Ohio, Gil Reis. One of the subjects that made it into our conversation was about food and Ray mentioned Hawker Centers. These are all over Singapore and needed more explanation than he could do justice to on the phone. Thus… Hawker Centers were created in the 1950s and 1960s by the Singapore government to replace the street hawkers who were often selling unsafe food. These centers, or food courts, are now licensed with health and cleanliness standards set by the government. Compared to most restaurants in Singapore, the …

A Book Club in Singapore. Yep They Are Here, Too.

by Pat WhydeDecember 8, 2014September 10, 2022

Ray and I attended our first book club meeting last night. This is going to be a very interesting and enlightening group to belong to. I always thought the books selected were the key to a good book club but I’m not sure now. The Friends of the Museum book club members are a collection of expats from all over the world – Brazil, Malaysia, UK, Australia, Turkey, India, US. It’s going to be fun to get to know them. The book we read for this meeting was a non fiction book called Once a Jolly Hangman by Alan Sandrake …

Durian – The King of Fruit

by Pat WhydeDecember 7, 2014November 17, 2023

For many years I have been curious about the durian fruit. I saw them for sale at Super G on Independence in Charlotte but because of the size and price I was not brave enough to buy one. They are one odd fruit. We first saw these at the fruit stand across the street back in August which is the Malaysian peak season and now as it gets close to the holiday season the supply is back but imported from a different part of Asia. This batch is smaller but they still are about the size and shape of a …

‘Tis the Singapore X-Mas Season

by Pat WhydeNovember 29, 2014November 17, 2023

X-Mas music is playing everywhere in public spaces and malls. My internal music machine is overwhelmed. I’m humming more than just “Good King Wenceslas” now. The wreathes and hangings around our condo complex look like they’ve been around for quite a few years. We stopped by Ikea yesterday and the artificial trees were all gone. Live trees were flowing out of the store. Even our local Japan Home store had small artificial trees for sale. The white tree above was in Liang Court Mall and is made up of dolls donated for a charity drive. The downtown streets were nicely …

Southern Ridges Hiking

by Pat & Ray WhydeNovember 26, 2014November 18, 2023

We took an easy hike through the Southern Ridges of Singapore this morning. No monkeys and no mud this time. We started the hike at Mount Faber’s Henderson Wave bridge and snaked around on the paths and along a elevated sky way over the tree tops. The city views from here were amazing. We stopped at a World War II museum at Bukit Chandu which was the scene of the last battle of Singapore in 1942 when the Japanese successfully invaded the island. Sad times but like all Singapore museums, the displays were interesting and innovative. Alas we did …

A hiking weekend 22-23 Nov 2014

by Pat & Ray WhydeNovember 23, 2014November 18, 2023

We had two really good hiking days this weekend, walking in between rain storms. We only got caught once coming home Sunday and got drenched in just a few moments as we scrambled to get our umbrellas out. A few weeks ago we hiked the Green Corridor with some friends. Pat was not able to finish the whole way then, so we rode a bus out to the spot where we stopped and finished the corridor on Saturday. Because of the rainy November here the Green Corridor could have been renamed the Brown Corridor or the Mud Corridor. Footing was …

Busy Birthday Week

by Pat & Ray WhydeNovember 16, 2014November 18, 2023

Mid November is a busy birthday time for our family. Today is Ray’s birthday, tomorrow is Jenny’s birthday and Tuesday is Drew’s birthday. Lots of celebrating going on here. Jenny planned a kids party for Drew last Friday. Drew and I made a chocolate cake from scratch and found out my convection oven works just fine. Glad to know that. The oven has been glaring at me every day since we moved in here like a dark mysterious cave filled with who knows what – bats, Golum, snakes. Now it’s my friend and I can get back to baking and …

Living Abroad – Decisions & Dilemmas: Mobile Phones and International Travel

by Pat & Ray WhydeNovember 11, 2014September 10, 2022

Some of our friends have asked about the plans and decisions we made before selling our house and car and moving out of the US. So we started writing down the kinds of decisions we had to make and what we found out. We thought we would add some of the things we discovered and the decisions and dilemmas we dealt with. We don’t know what we don’t know until we ask questions of ourselves and our environment. Here is Ray’s take on the technical issues of cellular or hand phones: Interesting how important mobile phones have become to all …

Singapore Green Corridor Hike

by Pat WhydeNovember 9, 2014November 18, 2023

Before we came to Singapore and were researching it to see what to look forward to, we read about the Green Corridor or the Greenway. It is a railroad track no longer in use that runs through the island. It was the original train line going into Malaysia and is about 16 miles long. We made two short walks on it just to get a feel for it. Then in October we met several women on a cemetery tour who also mentioned wanting to walk the Corridor. So Gwenn and I started emailing each other until we set up a …