Swedish in Singapore: Crayfish party, high tea and to do lists

Last Friday started off @ the smashing chateau Thoréns in Dover Park View with late crayfish dinner, a lot of snaps, songs and herring! The most fabulous party hats were given to all the boys (silver glitter) and girls (pink glitter), where of course a Viking host needs nothing less than a Viking hat.

I’d love to wear something like this to work

Some people just want it all

J and I still have glitter in the oddest places.. Thank you Claudia and David! One thought though: is it male or female crayfish we normally have? If it’s only male, would it not be outstanding to rename it to ‘gayfish party’ instead? Maybe not politically correct, but it’s really funny.

Saturday was very calm and we slept in for a long time, considering we left at 5.00. Then it was ‘the usual’ (feel great to be able to write that!) pool hang-around just swimming, reading and sleeping in the shade almost all day. We are starting to master the art of properly relaxing, which for me is probably the 1^st time ever. Before, I’ve always had these ‘have to:s’ hanging over me like ‘I have to read this’ or ‘I have to write that’ and ‘I have to practice presenting the latest results’ and so on. This has been the case every break or weekend for the past 12 years to be honest, so I have not been truly off without producing or stressing out about not producing during this time. Looking at the past 7 years alone, it was not unusual to have 10 appointments every day. Then we of course want a rich social life, so we’ve been trying to cram in all the fun stuff during the weekends, since we’ve been way to tired meeting up with people during the weeks. This has made me feel very restless, since I’ve always been running towards the next step and not really been able to stay in the moment. Now, I still have a desire to do things, but it’s more on a ‘because I want to’ rather than ‘because I have to’ basis. In the end, ‘being creative’ is a hugely different compared to ‘being productive’. I don’t complain about being busy, I actually really like it, but it needs to be with tasks which are fun or hard work which pays off. Since there is absolutely no point getting bitter over previous situations, I’ve decided to store it in my memory under the chapter ‘the very busy period where I learned shitloads’ and make sure things will be different in the future.

After the pool we dressed up and walked over to Chomp Chomp (restaurant/food court/entertainment area) and took a table at a small grill house. Since, we’ve still not had red meat at home yet, we went for two rare steaks with divine mushroom sauce, French fries and salad. We then tried out going back by a local bus (stops right outside our condo) and embarked on popping popcorns and decided on movie night. We were asleep by 21.30.

Next week's blog will be all about food, but this is for instance a really nice dish one can have at a food court for ca 15 SEK (150 JPY, 1.5 Euro): chicken porridge

The next day again started off by the pool, with small luxuries like the Sunday issue of New York Times which arrives for free to every doorstep at the Springbloom. It’s actually quite educating to read about global art shows and political statements. My new goal is to learn more about the economy, since I honestly know f*** all. We then changed to nice clothes and arrived with a taxi at The Swisshôtel to have the splendid cultural must on Sundays in Singapore: high tea.

My lovely Jonas at the entrance of The Swisshôtel

Traditionally 'high tea' was basically dinner served for workers at a high table, while here it is a remarkable buffet with a dessert section to die for, mostly at fancy hotels. In this case we were meeting friends at the Equinox restaurant at the 70^th floor with 360° panorama windows and view over Singapore city.

View from our window table at the 70^th floor at Equinox over the Singaporean Marina

Before I knew where the expression ‘high tea’ came from, I actually thought it was because it was served at a sky restaurant ;) The place itself was designed like an amphitheater and the floor to ceiling height was probably around 10 m. The food was fine and there were a lot to choose from, but it was the desserts and the chocolate and truffle tea I chose, which were truly amazing.

Jonas at the first round of food at the table

I had chocolate bisconi dipped in chocolate fondue, lemon curd cake, chocolate ice cream, straw- and raspberry tart, apple strudel, walnut and saffron pastry, grapes, mini blueberry muffins with mint chocolate, scones with cream and blackcurrant jam, honey and Galia melon, pineapple- and strawberry sorbet with chocolate- and caramel topping.

Round 1: it might not look like much, but it was just fantastic

After this visit, I’ve decided it’s highly unnecessary to fill at the stomach with proper food at high tea. Next time I’m only going for the desserts; I really don’t see any problem either, as long as I keep averaging 5 km in the pool a week. As I wrote on FB, I got so full I couldn't feel my elbows, and then fell asleep at 20.00.

The following Monday was actually the first day which was quite rainy since we came. Due to the heavy thunder storms it felt a bit too wild and crazy to hit the pool for the daily lapses; besides, I think I might still have been sugar-high. I therefore started watching all the new episodes of Parenthood, The Killing, Criminal minds, CSI LV and NY, Dark Blue, Southland, Game of Thrones and True Blood that I haven’t been able to see in Tokyo. I had also dragged out every piece of paper in the entire house, which in the end was a neat approximately half a meter high pile. Eight hours later after watching Sookie make out with Alexander Skarsgard, various bad/good guys being shot to death by all kinds of police and a very disturbing sex scene with a 40 year old little person (I mean ‘dwarf’, but I don’t think it’s nice to be so blunt), we we’re on. We’d gone from as lost as a Japanese person at a bar fight to having complete control over the paper trail of our lives in three countries. I had also survived a chili lunch, which could easily start a jet engine (OK Maija, it was not as bad as the time I mistook sambal olek for tomato puré and added four table spoons in the tomato soup we were cooking, but almost).

Anyways, I’d managed to prepare a respectable post-it-lay-out-a-la-Hallgerd of what had to be done. It included sorting out manuscripts, optician visits, planning a trip to Koh Samui, monitoring my cocktail tomato- and cucumber project, planning what additional furniture and items were needed for our home, prepare for a moving in party, finding anti-moist T-shirts, figure out where to buy olives/fefferoni/chick peas/kidney-, black-, white beans to cook myself and so on.

One of the projects: the cocktail tomatoes will hopefully be ready in a year or so..

Another project: why not sort out a separate onion box? Much more practical than having them spreading all kinds of shit in the vegetable compartment in the fridge

Then it’s of course the main business regarding my occupation which really starts with a simple list which seems to take a hell of a lot of time:

1.      Go through all in boxes and change my email to karinh.eurenius1980@gmail.com at all contacts.
2.      Find and contact recruitment bureaus in Singapore.
3.      List desired future employers and contact them directly.

The main thing is that it sucks having to stay inside in front of the computer, since I need internet for most of the above, when I can sit outside in the sun.. OK, here it’s shade, but you get the pic. I think it’s the whole Nordic mentality, where I expect that soon the summer will be gone to make room for cold and dark days and nights, and I have to make every possible moment outdoors count. Maybe I’ll let it go sometime in November when it’s still sunny at 7.30 every morning and 35°C?