On Mondays, I wear blue

I don't think the phrase "the Monday blues" is common in America, but maybe I'm wrong?  Anyway, I had never heard of it, but a guy I work with told me he wears blue every Monday to represent the Monday blues.  So now I do too.

The trouble is, I feel as if I have the Monday blues most days of the week right now.  Well, at least Monday to Friday.  I'm not sure what is really putting me in this funk - the past couple of weeks, I've been going through an internal review.. prior to that, I was travelling for work.. prior to that, I was trying to sort through a big transition at work.. etc.

I'm hoping that my upcoming trip to the US will be a nice breather, and hopefully I'll feel like I can push "reset" and have things feeling more within my comfort zone.  I'm hoping that I will get a little bit of clarity while I'm in the US.. both on what to do now and what to do 12 months from now.  I'm also hoping that when I get back, things will be in a more "normal" state, as the work calendar progresses more towards our traditional work stream.

This woman apparently does not have the Monday blues.  She wears neon.

Throwback Thursday

Sometimes I just really miss my friends...

My last rodeo

Vandy tailgate

High school grad party

Kerri's wedding

A random night out

Trip to Miami

Shannon's wedding rehearsal

MAcc party bus

Fourth of July

Prom pose!

Nadia's bachelorette party

Tia's!

Iron Fork

What I'm Watching Lately

Hello friends.  It is currently Saturday morning, and I'm blogging from the kitchen with a cup of coffee and a good night's sleep.  Is there anything more luxurious than a relaxed weekend morning?  I think not.

This past week was incredibly draining for me at work.  I think that in part, I was already on a bit of a sleep deficit due to Abu Dhabi, but I just could not get it together.  I spent this past week prepping for an important week coming up, and the stress was definitely not helping me feel any less tired.  It was an exhausting week to say the least, so I spent last night at home, eating frozen dumplings and watching internet television.  Not very glamorous, but exactly what I needed.

Speaking of internet television, I thought I'd share a bit about what I've been watching lately!  Last night, I plowed through a few episodes of Downton Abbey Season 2.  The thing is - I don't love this show.  I watched all of season one and though, meh.  And then I just sort of started watching season two by default, but I'm a bit surprised that I don't love this show because everyone else seems to.  Am I missing something about Downton's allure??

I'm thinking of picking up a couple of (new to me) shows - How I Met Your Mother and New Girl.  I know that I am about 100 years late to the HIMYM bandwagon, and I have watched a few episodes before, but I think that I am a little intrigued about how the show will wrap up??

The other thing that I am really into right now is TED Talks.  As I mentioned previously, I'm participating in a month of TED Talks that have been curated by a girl I grew up with.  I thought I would share some of my favorites thus far!

Dan Ariely: What makes us feel good about our work - this one resonated deeply with me.  One of the most dramatic shifts that I've experienced since coming to Singapore has been my viewpoint on work.  I thought this touched on a number of observations that I totally agreed with, and it gave me a lot of things to think about more.

Meg Jay: Why 30 is not the new 20 - I definitely consider myself to have spent a large (too large) portion of my 20s not taking things seriously and just kind of goofing around.  Obviously, I also think that everything happens for a reason, but I definitely agree with the underlying message in this talk.  Of course, the past is the past, and I'm really happy with where my life is right now.  If I could do it all over again, there are definitely things that I would do differently, but the bottom line is, I wouldn't do it all over again.  I feel very lucky to have the life I live now with the outlook that I have now.

Bryan Stevenson: We need to talk about injustice - I loved this one.  I took a seminar class in college on the death penalty, and it changed my viewpoint on things entirely.  This talk is one of the longer ones, but it is full of great things -examples, insights, questions.  Really powerful stuff in this one.

Tony Robbins: Why we do what we do - Another really great talk.  I have never gotten into any of the Tony Robbins hype, but I loved this talk.  Great takeaways and thoughts from this one.

Overall, I'm loving the TED Talks.  They are short and easy to keep up with, and it has been refreshing to either start or end each of my days with some interesting thoughts.  And I've learned a lot too!  So far, so good.  Join in (click on the link to Jenny's blog up top) if you want!

One more television related note - currently, I use Amazon Prime as my main source of video, but I'm thinking of making a switch.  Anyone have any thoughts on Netflix versus Hulu Plus?  Please share!!

The breeze is like a blowdryer

Hello friends!  As promised, here are some pictures from our Hari Raya / National Day / Stephanie's birthday vacation to Abu Dhabi!  (Side note - Brian didn't send me pictures, so these are a few that I took on my iPhone.)

We flew out late on Wednesday night after work.  The flight over is about 6.5 hours, and there is a four hour time difference, so we landed around midnight in the Middle East.  It was 95 degrees in the middle of the night.  It is hot in the desert!

We got to stay at the Hilton Abu Dhabi on Stephanie's points which was definitely a bonus!  But.. I have to admit, that I was a little bit afraid because it is obviously a place where there are a lot of Westerners, and the "chatter" was saying that all Westerners could be targets!  (Also, if you've seen Argo and you recall the scene at the Marriott... well, I just kept thinking about that.)

View of the Persian Gulf from the hotel

Anyway, the hotel was lovely, and Stephanie's diamond status and birthday status got us lots of perks!  Free upgrade!  Executive lounge!  Celebratory champagne!  Birthday cake every day!

Obviously the pool is a big factor in any hotel in the desert

Baskin Robbins stand at the pool!  Stay cool!

Beachfront on the Persian Gulf

Thursday, we spent the morning at the pool, and then we headed out for a desert safari in the late afternoon.  I wasn't really sure what to expect on a desert safari, and to be honest, I can't even articulate what I did expect, but what we experienced was not what I thought it would be!!  Oh by the way - it was 120 degrees.  So freaking hot in the desert.

We were picked up in a Land Cruiser and drove out to the desert, where we met up with a few other Land Cruisers that were part of the same tour company.  From there, we let some air out of all of our tires, and caravan-ed into the sand.

We spent some time just driving through the sand dunes.  It's really hard to explain, but it was crazy!  Definitely unlike anything I'd ever seen before.  I feel like, in television commercials, you always see some random SUV cruising over a hill of sand - like, it just rolls up to the top and parks.  So maybe that's what I thought we would do?  But in reality, it was anything but that!  We drove up and down, swerving, spinning, and sliding across the dunes.  Our car was actually the lead car, which made me think that we had the best driver of the bunch :)

Totally crazy, but totally awesome!  It felt like being in a roller coaster, but you were on sand the whole time.  In the picture above, you can kind of see one of the other cars sliding down the side of a dune.  I was happy to have seat belts and a roll cage!!

So what did you see on the safari?  Sand.  Lots of sand.

Party people!

After a while in the dunes, we stopped at a camel farm for some pictures and some smells.

Then we headed off to a play area where we could ride camels, go on four-wheelers, and try sand boarding.  I rode a camel, somewhat successfully, and tried to sand board, totally unsuccessfully!

Then it was time for dinner!!  There was an enclosed area with areas for eating, sampling Arabic coffee and dates (a traditional snack), hookah, henna, and trying on traditional Arabic costumes.

One of the tour guys actually said to us.. "Pretend like you are his two wives!" Hahaha.

Dinner was a delicious feast of kebabs, hummus, the best salad, rice, lentils, and some sort of traditional dessert that tasted like oatmeal?  Anyway - it was awesome.

This belly dancer was the after-dinner entertainment.

We spent all day Friday at the pool to celebrate Stephanie and Mike (who had just arrived) turning another year older!!

By the end of the day, we had basically made friends with everyone at the pool.  It was great haha.  The tab was not so great.

We ate dinner at a restaurant in the hotel called Hemingway's that served Mexican food (confusing?), and then we received yet another birthday cake for Mike and Stephanie!  Woohoo!

Saturday, we went out on a boat into the Persian Gulf and got to do some swimming and some stand up paddleboarding!!  It was a super fun day, but I have zero pictures of it!  Oh, but it was super hot, even in the water.  Warmer than bathwater in fact!  I think Mike said it best.. "the breeze is like a blowdryer.. it's just hot air".  Classic!

That night, we went to dinner at the Emirates Palace hotel, which was incredibly beautiful and fancy.  We had a great meal of Lebanese food, and then wandered around the hotel property snapping photos.

I love interesting ceilings

An ATM that dispenses gold.  UAE is obviously incredibly rich.

Fountains

City scape

Front of Emirates Palace

We left the hotel early on Sunday morning and then had the worst flight ever.  A long delay, 7.5 hours of screaming children, a poor movie selection, a slow flight attendant crew, and tons of turbulence.  Not great.  Then, because our flight had been so delayed, we ended up landing in Singapore at the worst time (the middle of the night) and had to wait forever to get taxis home.  Sigh.

But all in all - a great vacation!!  I wish that we had been able to see some more of the cultural stuff, but better safe than sorry!  

These next couple of weeks at work should be fairly rough, so I'm not looking forward to that, but I am definitely looking forward to being in town and catching up on some rest!!  Four weeks til I am in the US!

Safe and sound

Despite the elevated travel warnings, we had a great time celebrating Stephanie's birthday in Abu Dhabi!!  We all made it back safely to Singapore late last night, so I'm pretty exhausted today.  Work is a little frantic right now, so that definitely doesn't help.  Brian was the unofficial photographer for our trip this past weekend, so I'll post pictures and a trip recap once he sends me photos!

Hope everyone has a great Monday!

Reading recap

The other day I shared a television update, so I figured I should also share a reading update. Here the last few things that caught my eye:

The Vanity Fair with Kerry Washington on the cover - I have probably never read a VF, and I've mever watched Scandal, but I read this thing cover to cover!  Every article was great, including a write up about Benghazi. I'm not sure if this is still on newsstands in America, but it is a great issue.

Bossypants - I've never watched 30 Rock, but I do love Tina Fey (hey Mean Girls!), so when I saw the Kindle version of this book on sale for only $3.99, I snatched it up.  Funny, insightful, and easy to read.  I loved the book, and it made me love Tina Fey even more.

Lean In - I know that this book has generated plenty of buzz, but let me add to that.  I actually really enjoyed this, and even though I disagreed with some of Sheryl Sandberg's thoughts, overall I thought this book had a lot of really great ideas and points.  As I've started to think more about "what's next" after Singapore, I've started to think a lot more about "what I really want" etc, and books like this are great at stirring up ideas and lending fresh perspectives.

When Broken Glass Floats: Growing up Under the Khmer Rouge - Lena recommended this to be right when I moved to Singapore as a good book to learn more about "what went on in Cambodia".  If I am being honest, when she told me, my first thought was "what do you mean what went on in Cambodia".. and my second thought was "I probably won't ever read that".  But as I've noted over and over, one of the biggest things I've learned through my travels out here is just how little I know about this region.

PS- I ran five miles tonight!

I'm on a boat!

Sometimes, I feel as if my life in Singapore is not real.  My current lifestyle is certainly unlike any lifestyle I had in the US, and to be honest, it probably isn't sustainable.  I don't think I'd be able to keep up with this pace of tons of work and tons of travel forever, but part of what dictates the pace is the knowledge that it is only for a limited time!

My "everyday" social life also sometimes doesn't feel real.  This past Saturday, a group of friends and I spent the afternoon on a yacht to celebrate a birthday.  I mean, really?  A yacht?  And this was my low-key weekend!

There were about 25 of us in all, and the yacht was definitely big enough for us to spread out.. and play Twister!  We sailed around the island before dropping anchor for some swimming and a cookout.

 

As we sailed back into the yacht club that night, we got to watch the fireworks display!  (National Day is this week, and the city practices the fireworks display every Saturday for like, a month.)  It was awesome.  A really great Saturday!

Tomorrow, I am flying off to Abu Dhabi for the four day weekend.  (It is the end of Ramadan and National Day.)  My friends and I have checked the travel advisories and are monitoring the news carefully, but please keep us in mind!

One year

Yesterday was my one year anniversary of the day that I moved to Singapore.  One year!  In some ways, it feels like it has only been a few months, and in other ways, it feels like a lifetime has gone by since I was living in Nashville.

So much has happened in the past year, and I've tried to share it on this blog as best I can, but here are some of the highs and lows:

High: I've traveled to so many places and had so many great experiences - the foodie motorbike tour in Vietnam, the sunrise volcano hike in Bali, London, and hiking and wine tasting in Capetown are probably the stand-outs in my mind.

High: People who were total strangers 12 months ago are now some of my best friends.  I've said it a million times before, but the ex-pat community here is really awesome, and I am so thankful for it.  Meeting new people is always fun, but meeting new people doesn't always turn into strong friendships, so I'm thankful that I've found a great circle of friends in Singapore.

Low: Work continues to be a challenge for me.  I've tried not to talk too much about this on the blog, especially not in specific detail, but I've also tried not to hide it on this blog either.  I will say that being out here has given me such a greater appreciation for how lucky I was to have a job that I really loved back in the US.  Of course, I know that the challenges I'm facing now are part of the experience and will (hopefully) develop me professionally, but it's just hard sometimes.  I guess that's why it's not the comfort zone.

Low:  As much as I love living out here, I still miss my peeps at home.

I've got one more year left on my current contract here, and I have no clue what will happen after that.  I still have a lot of things left to cross off on my Singapore Bucket List, so I need to get to work on that!  Time flies out here, so I don't want the next year to disappear too quickly.

PS - I'm doing a month of TED Talks and loving it so far.  If you're interested, join in!  I'm sure that I will blog about some of the thoughts and reactions I have to some of these.