After that we decided to venture to all of the local bars we had heard so much about. We went to the top of the Rex hotel where an amazing band played Latin, guitar lead, music while we were there. After a few beers, we left to go to Saigon Saigon which was in another hotel diagonally across from the Rex. Both of these restaurants had amazing views of the city. Saigon Saigon has the best in my opinion. The bar is set up on the roof and instead of walls with windows they have folding wooden doors. It was a nice night so all the doors were open and we had a perfect view of Notre Dame Cathedral. To make myself feel big time I ordered a Tom Collins and smoked a Cuban.

From there we proceeded to have a couple of beers at random bars as we walked our way back to the hotel. Nothing was too memorable except for a bar named 77 Saloon, I think those are the right numbers. Anyway, picture this theme. The music was a Filipino rock band who were pretty good if you ignore the fact that they had 6 lead singers. The bar decor was a mix of the American Southwest and Native American Northwest. So there were “Don’t Mess with Texas” signs hung on Totem Poles. It was such a hodgepodge of people and cultures that we pretty much had to end our night there due to sensory overload.

Plus, up to that point the only sights we had seen were the insides of bars through the bottoms of our own empty Saigon beer bottles. I’ll try to put up Day 2 tomorrow.

BD

I really don’t have time to write about my Vietnam trip at the moment.  It was quite a busy long weekend; I slept about 9 hours the entire time I was there.  That pretty made me a zombie at work this week.  I’ve spent this weekend catching up on Zs.  Lucky for you, I was able to toss up about 60 pictures from the trip.  I have about 60 more and I took some movies but I think this album gives a good idea of the weekend (at least the sight seeing parts).

It may take a while to go over my trip so check the sight this week for a few installments.

The Vietnam album link is on the media page…enjoy.

Billy

I bet you can’t guess where I am going this weekend. That’s right…Vietnam. It’s going to be a 4 day / 3 night adventure thanks to the public holiday on Monday. I’ll be sure to take plenty of pictures for everyone to browse.

In the meantime, I added a new photo link on the media page. It only has two pictures on it at the moment but I’m going to start taking more pictures of my every day life and putting it in that album. One of the pictures in the album right now is of the Singapore Civilian War Memorial I took earlier tonight. It is dedicated to all of those innocent souls who died during the Japanese occupation during WWII. I thought it looked spectacular all lit up. The locals call it the chopstick monument.

Life has been good though. My friend moved into a new place about 10 days ago and he had a condo-warming BBQ over the weekend which was great. His place is very nice and very close to the center of the city. I’m jealous! I took a picture of the view but it didn’t come out to well. If I get invited back, I’ll make sure to bring my digital camera.

I also made it out to Sentosa a couple weekends back for a co-workers birthday party. It is a reclaimed island off the coast of Singapore. You need to take a monorail (who else thinks of the Simpsons when they hear that word) to get to it. It a very touristy area. Again, the party was at night so my cell phone pictures were of poor quality. I liked the bar we were at. It was around a pool and had beds on the beach. I think I may spend a lazy Sunday over there at some point in the future.

I’ll try to put the Vietnam post up on Tuesday or Wednesday. It could be a long one so it might be in installments.

Bye-Bye

Billy

And if the world does turn, and if London burns
I’ll be standing on the beach with my guitar
I want to be in a band, when I get to heaven
Anyone can play guitar
And they won’t be a nothing anymore

Radiohead – Anyone Can Play Guitar

After making a miserable attempt at playing guitar my senior year of high school, I have redoubled my efforts. Check out the latest addition to my room:

I bought it about 10 days ago. Frankly, I have more than redoubled my efforts. I’ve been playing both before and after work and I’m starting to get back into the swing of things. It’s become a welcome addition to my balcony-oriented lifestyle.

I forgot to mention a funny (G-Rated) story that happened with Dave my last post. One of the nights we were out, we were asked to swing by a modeling agency the next day because Melissa (she gave us her card)… liked our look, whatever that means. What was the name of the agency? “Cauc-Asian Faces” That is not a joke. Needless to say, Mel will be waiting quite some time before I go strolling through her doors.

If you notice I also added two new links on the left hand side.  One of them is for the Travis Roy Foundation.  I’m a little disappointed in myself that I didn’t think to put it up sooner. Please take a look at the site because it is a cause near and dear to my heart.  The second link is to year by year recaps from the annual Travis Roy Foundation Wiffle Ball Tournament.  I guess someone kept stats all these years.  My good friend Mario was kind enough to put these stats online as well as recaps of each tournament.  I’m on the Boston Beef if you want to look at stats and see how legends are born (2006 is required reading).

I also booked another trip! I’m going to Ho Chi Mihn City (Saigon) in The Socialist Republic of Vietnam in about a month for 4 days/3 nights. I’m pretty pumped. If anyone has any suggestions about what I should do (besides not mention anything that happened between 1959 and 1975) I’m all ears.

“Sometimes you’ve got to specifically go out of your way to get in trouble. It’s called fun.”

Robin Williams in Good Morning Vietnam

Adios

Supergrass – Alright

Again, I’m slacking on the posts.  But this excuse may be my best so far.  I had a surprise visitor.  My friend Dave from BC has been traveling the globe since graduation.  Last Wednesday we put two and two together while he was in Bali and he decided to make a slight detour.  And so come Friday morning, I had my first guest.  He stayed until Tuesday and we had a blast.  Hit the town, saw the sights and caught up.

There isn’t too much to recap as I pretty much brought him to the places I have already gone. I do have this one picture of us at Boat Quay:

Not bad, right!

I’ve also begun spending a good deal of time on my balcony now.  On the weekends, its a good place to get a cool breeze and enjoy some beers and music.   Even on the week nights, I’ve been bringing my computer or a book outside to just relax.  I’m writing this post outside right now.  I’ve got to enjoy it before I get back and I can only enjoy a balcony depending on what season it is.

It’s been great to get all the comments and emails from everyone.  I really appreciate it.  I’ve uprooted myself but it’s always good to get some hometown lovin’!

That’s it for now…

Billy

-Eric B & Rakim, I Know You Got Soul

I’m sorry I missed last Sunday’s post but I’m hear to pick your spirits up with a mid-week report…

Unlike the last time I skipped posting on a Sunday, I had a good reason. Over the last 10 days I’ve been extremely busy. As I mentioned my previous post, last week was the end of the quarter which brings the pressure in the sales industry. I don’t mind that at all it just brought on some long hours. I also went to two conferences in the last two weeks. I think I will be going to a decent number of them so I decided to keep track of them in a new tab at the top of the page.

The first one I went to was a two-day, South East Asian Private Equity Conference. It was not exciting to say the least. What makes these conferences good for my company and makes them worthwhile for me, is if there are a lot of people attending. There were only about 70 attendees to this conference and most didn’t return for the second day. It was especially not worth my time because of the pressure to close back in the office. It was good to get my feet wet at my first conference but it was altogether a negative rather than a positive.

I also attended an Islamic Finance Conference yesterday. This one was much better for a lot of reasons except one. There were about 250 people there which kept me busy most of the day. It was also a one day conference which got right down to brass tacks, took care of business, and ended. The one problem I had with it was the post conference networking. After my first conference, there was a 90 window of free cocktails at the hotel bar following the conference. It was a nice touch and a nice end to a day spent mostly standing around. I wasn’t going Mary Ann’s on this bar but a few Heinekens were consumed. However, because the second conference was on ISLAMIC finance there were no adult beverages to be had. I, along with my two colleagues, had a soda and left promptly.

It is understood that once you put your time in at some of the local conferences, they will send you to some outside the country. I am looking forward to seeing where my next conference is. I am hoping for something in Europe. The guy who sits across from me is off to Stockholm at the end of the month which sounds awesome.

Last weekend, I caught up on some sleep, played some street hockey again and collected this poster from the frame maker I sent it to:

It is the ’05-’06 Eddie Aikau Invitational Commemorative Poster. I’m guessing most people who are reading this don’t know who he is. Please educate yourself here…Eddie Aikau

Adios,

BD

All around the world
We could make time
Rompin’ and a stompin’
cause I’m in my prime! (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

Before I get into my weekly recap, I would just like to say thank you to everyone reading and sending me cards and emails. Ginger Spice, I received your note this week, it was very thoughtful.

After a month of not posting any pictures…you’re in for a treat. I put up a whole bunch from my trip to Batam on Friday. I took most of them with my new cell phone (the gadgets they have here are so cool) and some with my digital camera. You’ll notice that the first couple look funny because I forgot to turn off (I didn’t know I turned it on) the Sepia effect on my camera which means they look old-timey.

On to the trip:

I went to Batam with 7 other guys. My buddy Andrew from home, his roommate Leigh, and five savages from Australia who were friends of Leigh. The were great guys. We caught the 9:00 AM ferry from Singapore and it was packed because of the long weekend. After 45 minutes or so we disembarked in a new country, Indonesia. Our package took care of everything. For $163 Sing dollars we were provided with round-trip ferry tickets, our visa, transportation to and from the course, our greens fees and club rentals. Only one thing was missing…the adult libations. And boy did these Aussies know how to buy in bulk. We spent over a million Rupiah in the duty-free shop…or about $200 Sing dollars (for the rest of this blog just assume everything is in Sing dollars unless otherwise noted). They also found 10AM the proper time to start elbow-bending; who am I to say no?

The course, Palm Springs, was great. It wasn’t too difficult yet still had spectacular views. At one point I thought the Aussies might get us kicked off but instead our entourage just grew larger. Some of the pros, the Marshall and the Caddy Master all decided to hang out with us at one point or another. I played pretty well for not having played in many moons and using some rental sticks. All in all, it was just a great experience because Andrew and I just kept looking at each other and saying stuff like, “Can you believe we are golfing in Indonesia right now?” What a day.

You’ll see my last couple of pictures are completely out of focus and it looks like I’m at a rave. I’m actually on the ferry back and the rocking boat messed up the pictures. I decided to keep them and post them because I wanted to remember the full moon that night. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was in the southern part of the sky so there was almost no light pollution except for the random boat or two in the distance. It was the brightest moon I have ever seen. It was one of those times when you think to yourself, I’m floating in space on a tiny, blue marble. I thought going over to Batam would satiate my wanderlust but after seeing that moon it just egged me on. There is so much to see, so much to do, and so little time. (I hope that song lyric at the start makes a little more sense now.)

That’s why Andrew and I are planning a trip to Vietnam in May. May 1st is Labor Day over here and it’s on a Thursday. So our plan is to take that Friday off and have a nice 4-day vacation in Southern Vietnam. With flights as low as $208 it would be a crime not too.

I’ve got a big week of work coming up. It’s the last full week of the quarter so they really want people closing. I also get to go to my first conference this week. I’ll let you know how it goes.

And in some of the most exciting news…I’M GOING TO HAVE A VISITOR! My good friend from BC, Dan Lennon, will be making the trip and staying with me the last full week of April. Who’s next?!?!
Adios,

BD

Sorry, I didn’t post anything last week. I don’t really have an excuse because I did almost nothing last Sunday.

So what’s up with the title of this post? Well after it not raining for three weeks or so while I was here it got real real wet. On Wednesday, it rained like I’ve never seen it rain before. I saw a report where 60% of the monthly rainfall for March fell in about 12 hours. There were two four hour storms that made me rethink my skeptical view towards the story of Noah and the Flood. I didn’t get stuck out in them which was great because it’s no fun being soaked and then having to sit in an air conditioned office. But almost every day this week it at least rained a little if not a biblical amount. Wet season is over but I was also told that there was a shift of seasonal winds which may keep it wet for the next week or so. Not cool.

I have some cool things to report, however. On Friday night, I indulged in some after-work, adult beverages at a watering hole aptly named “Ice Cold Beer.” There I had a chili-vodka shot which was as hot as it sounds. I also met a pair of Canadians that play street hockey every Saturday at 4:30 and I got the invite. It was some of the best street hockey I’ve been involved in. It was 4 on 4 (both teams had two lines) and the goalies had full pads and everyone played at a quality level. If you are dedicated enough to find a hockey game in Singapore, it is highly unlikely you are a slouch. Most of the guys were Canadians, but one of the goalies was a local, there was a guy from the South Shore of Mass, a pair of Swedes and a guy from Finland.  If Bruins game were only on at a reasonable hour over here, I’d be sitting pretty.

I’m getting sporty in more ways than one.  I bought a tennis racket and play Tuesdays before work starts with one of my buddies.  I’ve still got my strokes except my backhand is now total garbage so I may need to play a lot before I can come back to win any B&T titles.  I am also going to Bintam (Indonesia) on Good Friday to play a little golf with some friends.  I promise to take pictures.

Besides that…not too much to report.  I have been getting some promising offers of visitors.  Don’t be shy!  I’d love to see some familiar faces over here.

Over and Out.

I finally got my first paycheck last week too which was a big one because I was also getting reembursed for my flight over. So now that I have some extra walking around money hopefully I can start living a life worth writing about, because not much went on this week. I’m going to try and make a fun purchase or go some place exciting so I can take some pictures and have some material. I did eat a lot of Taiwanese food this week, which like almost everything else out here, was delicious.

Anyway, I hope everyone is doing well and next week I’m going to try and come up with a list of pros and cons to commemorate the one month mark.