Before I go...

Tonight I am headed to Canada. I have to go to Vernon for the AGM of our condo. I am president, and we are only three units so one of us has to go, and Tim is busy flying.
I am going to leave at 1 a.m. tonight, and get into Tokyo around 9 tomorrow morning. I will have TWELVE hours to kill in the Narita airport - oh joy - and then get on AC to Vancouver and will arrive before I leave. Because of the dateline. Then I overnight in Vancouver and take a positive space seat to Kelowna the next morning. Because ski season is here, I can not rely on standby. My friend Rae will pick me up, and I will stay with her. She is in another unit of our condo. The meeting is Thursday morning, and Thursday night, Jean, who is renting our place is having a pot luck gathering for me so I can see the ski buddies who are out there already. Friday morning I head back to Singapore. Kelowna/Vancouver/Tokyo /Singapore. I will get back Sunday night.
Our friends Heinz and Sylvie will have arrived Saturday to an empty apartment. Both Tim and I will get back Sunday night. Of course I have to add I HOPE I get back because it is all standby. So many connections to make standby. The price is right but the comfort level suffers.
Medically I have had a good week. I have been told fibromyalgia dips and crests. I want to work very hard and prove their diagnosis wrong. But I had a dip a few weeks ago. Incredible fatigue just hit in a huge wave and I had to go to bed. Then the fascia all stiffened up again. But a week later I am better. Of course what I don't need is days in an airplane. But with lots of yoga, stretching, osteo treatments, massage, I get to feel human. I am determined to get rid of this. By working hard on stretching the fascia. In so many ways I am healthier than ever. Down 30  lbs, and when in a crest, very flexible. I am working out either yoga, stretching/cardio or swimming every day. So it  isn't all bad.
Had a workshop on meditation at my yoga studio. It was great. I love my yoga studio. It has saved my sanity and my body. I am lucky to have it. Both my sanity and the yoga studio!
I went on a tour to Bukit Brown "Brown Hill" A Mr John Brown bought an estate on a hill and when he died it eventually became a cemetery for Singapore. Volunteers, "Brownies", are busy giving tours of the cemetery to raise people's awareness of this incredible jungle in the middle of Singapore. A vast green space with monkeys, lizards, hundreds of century old trees and thousands of birds. The city is taking over a part of it (for now- soon all of it) to put through an expressway. The bodies buried in the cemetery, if not claimed by descendants, will be exhumed, cremated and ashes to the sea. To claim an ancestor, you then have the expense of exhuming them and doing what you wish for them. Very expensive. It is a tragedy.
But you don't speak directly against the government. This is a police state. So they hope enough people will do something (like write in TripAdvisor about this gem of jungle in the center of Singapore), that the government might change their plans. Good luck, but it does make them feel better. (I don't know if it made the news back home but Singapore Transit bus drivers, immigrants , who live in abominable conditions in government housing have gone on strike. 4 have been jailed for speaking out against the government.)
I learned so much about the history of Singapore. The graves were of settlers to the original port of the silk and spice trade, those who fought the Japanese occupation of 1942, those that built up Singapore in it's early days. My iphoto is misbehaving so I can't show you photos  but when it has finished it's detention, I will show you some pics and tell you ALL about it.
I also went to see joss sticks, paper figurines and traditional Chinese crafts. Amazing this: Only the Chinese diaspora has the true traditions of China. Mainland lost all traditions as a result of the Cultural Revolution. Singaporean Chinese are very proud of their practicing ancient Chinese customs. Joss sticks are incense sticks and part of the very important burial rites. Also the paper figurines. You burn effigies of things (a paper car, a paper  iPad. a paper house) and the smoke goes to your dead ancestor. You are wishing that he gets to upgrade in afterlife. So you send him a BIG house, or a BMW, or concubines or.... I saw a 5 story at least 30' high and 15' long being made for somebody who wants to really upgrade his ancestor.
It was lovely happenstance to learn about the cemetery and burial customs, and then see how they make what is part of the rituals.
Christmas is larger than life here. I think I am going to have to do something Christmassy. I wasn't going to. And I have to say when I hear some of the more poignant carols in the malls, I get a little mushy and I think it is going to get harder and harder. The kids don't come til after Christmas so I was going to basically ignore Christmas. In this equatorial Asian culture. But they are doing it up big, so I might relent.
Ta