Wild Times

Ok, I'm sure putting this picture in the public domain will come back to haunt me, but there it is. This is me and one of my new friends from Borneo out during the jungle trek. I told you things were pretty basic there, but did you believe me?

Anyway, in Singapore now and it seems pretty nice. Glad I accidentally got an extra day here. Singapore is soo organized and clean that it is like a vacation from SE Asia, right in the middle of SE Asia. And I'm actually enjoying that quite a bit right about now. An example: as far as I can tell most Asian cultures do not que up in lines: they just go. To the Westerner, this means that they are always cutting in front of you. This pisses me off, even though I know that it is a cultural thing and they mean nothing by it. Anyway, when I got off the bus from Malaysia in Singapore, the first thing I saw was a line of about 50 people waiting for a bus. But the really remarkable thing was this line was super ordered. I mean it looked military-perfectly straight, perfectly spaced. I swear. I should have taken a picture but I was too shocked to think to reach for the camera.

Ok, now the random mumblings:

• I've seemed to establish a "brief narrative followed by bulleted items" format. Bite sized nuggets for the MTV generation. Is it working for y'all?
• Speaking of y'all: I was talking to a Danish woman the other day (sooo many Danes here!!!) and she told me that she had just met some loud Texas in Amsterdam. The thought of Texasan in Amsterdam representing America really freaked me out. Why didn't we let them do that lone-star state thing? I think they still want to do it, and the rest of us probably want it too. Is it too late? We can let them out and DC in and we wouldn't even need to change the flag.
  
• Katie arrives in about 6 hours! Can't wait to see her!! I just looked up her flight and I looking like it flies from SFO to Hong Kong to Bangkok to Singapore. I know about the Hong Kong stop, but not the Bangkok stop. Luckily she will probably be to tired to be mad at me for finding that "great" flight.
• Speaking of Katie being mad at me, it seems that 37 years of "put the toilet seat down" training are no match for 7 weeks of SoliDude traveling. Actually it was probably in week 2 that the automated reflex was last seen. I hope she doesn't fall in...
  
• Now that I have fast internet, I've put a zillion new pictures on my Picasa site. Once again for those of you who have made my picture page your homepage (oh right, because my blog is your home page...) it's at: http://picasaweb.google.com/erki666. I think every folder there that was added/updated in August/September is new or has new stuff in it...Yes, there are more embarrassing pictures of me buried in there...
  
• Looks like I'm starting to finally set some solid job stuff lined up! So I might actually be able to come back and pay off the credit cards that I charged up for the this trip afterall (rather than just staying here and hiding from my creditors...). One of the job leads is from somewhat that might actually be reading this blog and wants to hire me to write something. How crazy are they?
• Actually, I've gotten many nice compliments about my blog from people, and I appreciate that. On a related note, when I took a big step back and thought "what do I really want to do" not "what should I do" with regard to my career, the idea of being a travel writer was something that came up pretty strong. (Probably happens to everyone who travels, but...) So if any of you really do like my blog and have super connections into the world of travel writing, hook me up! (Travel writers have editors, right?(
• Speaking of travel writing, I think I have a super-sweat travel related scam I want to try out. Background: The Lonley Planet guidebooks are KING here. I know they are everywhere, but I literally don't think I've seen another guide book on my trip. I was thinking that if I had a notebook that said something like "2009 Lonley Planet Update notes" casually displayed at hotels and restaurants as I traveled, good thinks might follow. (Until i leave it unattended and they see that it just has blank pages and misc doodles in it...). I might try it anyway just for kicks...

OK, gotta run. Been in here too long....Seeya later...The next SoliDude entry might be a TogetherCouple entry instead.

-erik