Day 243: Singapore – Personal Grooming Pt. 1!
We awoke in the most “first world” place we’ve been since Europe — and arguably the most modern since New York. You can drink the tap water AND there are modern buildings AND green city-of-the-future initiatives around every corner AND crazy insane diversity. It’s missing a little bit of old/grit for my taste, but otherwise….HELLO SINGAPORE!! So happy to be here.
As we walked around this morning, Willa goes: “It feels so GOOD to be in a BIG, MODERN CITYYYYYY!” Ah, our little New Yorker.
Also: Surreal this all exists so close to Cambodia. Kind of like Port au Prince, Haiti and Miami…
Teddy got up early to get online with the O’Keefes and his brother back home to do their NFL fantasy league draft. Don’t ask me to explain what that means, but apparently it went well.
Then he left to go to do his chunk of personal grooming errands: a dermatology appointment and a haircut!
I took the kids to breakfast and then we walked into our neighborhood to Toys R Us for a refresh of games and art supplies. We also hit up a bookstore for activity books and other stuff.
This particular mall — Forum — was almost 100% dedicated to kids, with tons of classes (piano, ballet, etc.), four different kid haircut spots, tons of clothing stores, Toys R Us and a few different games and book shops. It painted a picture of intense parent consumers who are very focused on their kids having the best and being the best.
Here are our “best of the best” kids riding on a coin-operated jeep kiddie ride for 15 minutes.
In the bookstore, surrounded by aisles of kid chapter books, Willa goes, “I can’t WAIT to have my VERY OWN library card when we get back to New York!”
After reading this in the NYT this week, we keep saying, “You can get one ONLY if you’re really good.” Ha!
We met Teddy for lunch at….DIN TAI FUNG!!!! Our favorite soup dumpling chain, which we discovered in Shanghai. So good to be back. Missed it. If you live in LA or Seattle, get thee to a DTF location stat.
Around 2:30 I peeled off from the crew and went for my own dermatology visit. More below.
Teddy took the kids to Bounce Inc, the same chain we went to in Johannesburg after a week of safari. Sometimes kids just need to freak out and bounce for a few hours after being pent up.
By 5 pm we were riding in a Grab — that’s the Asian Uber — to meet up with Andrew Wolf! Wolfy is a DC friend of both of ours from high school, but in particular one of my oldest and dearest buddies. He’s lived here for the last 10 years and is married to Wei Hwa, a Singaporean woman.
We got a tour of his office — he’s a co-founder of Zinier — and then had dinner and drinks at Potato Head. The kids were really good. Occupied with some sticker books and games from Toys R Us while we caught up and had a few beers.
So good to see him, and we made plans to hang a few more times this week.
When we were riding home in another Grab, James complained that I had backed off a promise for dessert (or something). That’s his new move: Say “but you proooommmmised!” about things like ice cream and iPad time, when we did no such thing. So tonight, when I dismissed his latest claims, James forcibly/dead serious replied: “But I HEARD you! Right in my EAR HOLES!!” Hahahhaaa.
MISC:
I had to get to a dermatologist. I have the same breakout-y, sensitive skin I had when I was 15. So two months in swampy Asian summertime, with all the humidity and pollution and sweating meant disaster for my face.
I couldn’t get to Singapore fast enough for this appointment.
I found Dr. Patricia Yuen online and really liked her. I’ll spare the details, but many treatments were done. Now we wait.
I may be on a soul-searching, existential life adventure….but I still have standards, people!!
