And I'm off again

Well after three whole weeks at home in Singapore, I'm flying tonight to Auckland, New Zealand!  Stephanie and I are signed up for the Auckland half marathon on Sunday, and we are taking a few days to explore the city first!  I'm very excited, and I'll definitely be sure to share some pictures when I get back.

But first, let's take a look back at the past few days!

I went running at MacRitchie Reservoir on Saturday morning.  It was my first time there, but I loved it!  A nice 11.5km path that was a combo of pavement and trail, sunshine and shade, reservoir and woods.  I'll definitely be coming back.

Making chili.  Sunday night dinner was one of my favorite things to do in Nashville, so this Sunday night, I cooked up a pot of chili for myself and a friend.  Yum!

Fishball soup for lunch :)

A putting range at the dentist's office

Hope everyone is having a good week!

Missing the kitchen

Those who know me know that I love to eat, and I love to eat most anything.  One thing that has definitely changed since I've moved to Singapore has been what I eat.  Obviously, I eat loads more Asian food, and gone are the days of kale, Greek yogurt, and anything from Trader Joe's.  The food scene in Singapore is actually really great - you can get anything but good Mexican, but for some reason, I often end up eating the most random things.

Case in point - for dinner tonight, I had some butter lettuce topped with salsa, lentils cooked in taco seasoning (imported from America), and half an avocado.  This was actually one of my more "composed" meals.. a lot of nights, I end up eating avocado sandwiches, banana with peanut butter, or frozen dumplings with a side of veggies.  Super random, but super low maintenance.

I eat this way now for a multitude of reasons.  Groceries (at least the items that I want to eat) are so expensive.  I was always the girl who scoured the Publix ads and only bought things when they were BOGO.  "If it's not on sale, then it doesn't exist" was actually a rule that I followed pretty closely.  Nowadays, I find myself trying to just find prices that I can even bear to look at.  I saw a recipe the other day for a simple soup made with tortellini and veggies.  At my local grocery store, the tortellini was $11, the spinach was $6, and the canned tomatoes and broth would have run me another $5.  If I wanted to top my soup with the optional parmesan cheese, that would've been another $7.  For that much money, I would rather just go out to dinner and not have to do any dishes!

But I miss cooking!  I deeply miss cooking.  I am going on vacation with some friends over New Years, and we are staying in a condo with a kitchen.  We just started to do some initial planning, and someone mentioned putting together a grocery list.  The thought of being able to actually cook (and for more than just one!) is so exciting to me!  I looked on my old Pinterest boards for recipes and realized all the great foods that I've been missing out on.  If anyone wants some recipe ideas, just let me know.. I've got a stockpile that are waiting to be made...

Yummy weekend

Hi friends!  It is Sunday afternoon here in Singapore.. I've got a few minutes before heading out to hot yoga, so I thought I would drop in with a quick hello.

This week went by really quickly - I think the public holiday on Tuesday was a nice way to break it up, and it made work so much more enjoyable :)  Unfortunately, the weekend has seemed to go by equally as quickly, which is not what I was hoping for!

Regardless, it has been a nice weekend.  I am in the middle of a few solid weeks in Singapore without any travel, so it has been really nice to not be rushing around everywhere in between trips!  I spent Friday evening on Club Street with some girlfriends, and then I meant to wake up early for a run on Saturday morning, but I just couldn't drag myself out of bed!  I have been incredibly tired lately, and I just can't seem to get enough sleep!  I did manage to hit the treadmill in the afternoon (after a lovely massage!), and then Saturday night, a group of us gathered to go to Chicken Up!  Chicken Up is a Korean fried chicken restaurant that offers a chicken buffet and free-flow (open bar) beer for only S$50!  What a steal :)

We tried various types of Korean fried chicken - spicy, soya, sweet and sour, popcorn, and had some truffle fries to go with it all.  The buffet was also advertised to come with a salad, so I was looking forward to having some greens after indulging in so much fried food!  (Side note - it wasn't a real buffet where you go up and get food.. basically, you just ordered what type of chicken you wanted and they just kept bringing it to you?  I don't know.)  So I asked the waitress for salad, and my friends made fun of me for being so excited for "what probably will be some terrible iceberg lettuce topped with a terrible ginger dressing".  Well, imagine our surprise when the salad came out.. and it was literally just iceberg lettuce with yellow mustard on top!  Yellow mustard!  Perhaps that is how everyone stays so thin...

Anyway.. another delicious part of my weekend.. Earlier today, I got the chance to partake in one of my favorite new indulgences - high tea!  A group of us went to the Shangri-La Hotel to check out their high tea buffet, which was absolutely delicious.  It's funny because I've come to love high tea so much, but in America, I really don't think that I could even name a place to go for high tea!

The Shangri-La featured a huge tea list - black tea, green tea, even blue tea!  They also had a great buffet of Western foods like tea sandwiches and salads, Asian dim sum, and a huge selection of dessert!  I was too busy eating the whole time, so the only picture I managed to snap was of my friend's enormous dessert plate.

So now I'm off to sweat out some of that sugar and to end my weekend on a high note.  Happy Sunday!

Floating and the future

Hello friends.  Today is a public holiday in Singapore, but I've spent the day working from home in order to do some catch up after my long absence.  I find that working from home usually goes one of two ways - you either get tons of stuff done, or  you get nothing at all done.  (Fortunately, I've been able to get quite a bit accomplished from my sofa today!)  I also took advantage of some Flexibility (squared ha) and went out for a run this afternoon!  It has been raining quite a bit during the mornings and evenings, so this was my first outdoor run in Singapore in ages.  Man, I had forgotten how HOT it is here.  Even when it doesn't feel like it's that hot outside, 30 minutes of running will make you sweat like crazy!

So while I was running, I was thinking... I'm not sure if I've really mentioned this before, but I feel like I've finally gotten to a season in my life where I'm pretty happy with how things are going.  I spent a lot of my twenties putting a lot of pressure on myself and feeling frustrated that I wasn't living up to my own expectations, but as I've crossed into 30, I really feel like I've been able to let a lot of that go.  It's an incredibly liberating feeling, and I am beyond thrilled to have released myself from this (self-created) burden.

That said, I feel like I'm a bit lost for direction these days.  The downside of easing up on some pressure on myself is that now I find that maybe I'm just floating?  Just kind of carrying on with life but not really pushing myself towards something?  Like, I'm not really sure what my next step is, and even worse, I'm not sure what I want my next step to be.  Getting the opportunity to go on secondment and move overseas was certainly a goal of mine for a while, but now I feel like I need to set my sights on some new goals.  I've obviously been trying to soak up my time in Singapore and enjoy it for what it's worth without too much fretting over the future, but I think that it might be time to come back to Earth for a bit and think hard about where I go from here.  If you've got any thoughts or suggestions, please feel free to share!

And now, just to lighten the mood, here are some funny pictures I've snapped lately.

This man is ready for happy hour!

This was in front of me on an escalator at the movies.  A tail on one pocket?

Back

Well friends, it has been a week since I've been back, and it has definitely been full of ups and downs!  As I mentioned previously, I was a little sick towards the beginning of the week, and that was a definite bummer.  Coming back from vacation is always hard, but it makes it even harder when you don't feel well!  Luckily, I was able to get some rest and felt a lot better by mid-week.

Once I was feeling better, the days were much brighter.  Work was busy (but in a good way!), and the second half of the week totally flew by!  I was also just in a much better mood, and that is always a plus.  I met up with some friends for dinner on Thursday night, and it was so great to be able to catch up and just see everyone.  As much I as had loved being back in the US for so long, I really missed a lot of my friends here!!

This weekend was fairly low key.  After happy hour on Friday after work in order to welcome a new co-worker, I was up early on Saturday morning to get back in the yoga studio.  It had been over a month since I had been, and class was brutal.  It was awesome.  I just love yoga so much, and I'm so happy to have found a studio that I love here.  The rest of the day was filled with taking care of boring things.. laundry, chores, groceries, etc.  Sunday has been spent eating dumplings, sitting by the pool with friends, and a trip to the movies (Gravity in IMAX 3-D).  It feels good to be back.

One thing I haven't really gotten back into is blogging.  Obviously, here I am blogging right now, but I didn't really take any photos during the week to share with you, so all I have for you today is words.  Hopefully I will be better next week :)

The long haul

Well friends, after nearly a month in the US, I'm back in Singapore!  The time at home was wonderful, and I feel like I got to do so many things, whether it was life related or work related.  I mentioned this to many of you while I was home, but that is likely to be my last trip back to the US before my secondment is over.  So I'm in Asia for the long haul now!  Right now is also the start of some key things happening at work over the next few months, so apparently it is time to buckle down!

Here is a quick recap of some of the photo highlights from my vacation:

First order of the day - pumpkin spice latte

Hello Chicago!

Yum Chipotle

Loved catching up with these girls over brunch

A week at a great hotel

Gorgeous views!

Perfect running scenery

Hello Seattle!

SEAHAWKS GAME!!!

Loved

This game had about 10 people in attendance

Fish tacos on the water, Seattle

Koi pond at the Japanese Gardens, Portland

More Japanese Gardens, Portland

Yum!

Vacation was great, but now I'm a little sick, which totally sucks.  Hoping to kick this thing soon!