Friday-Day 19- 19 August 2011

Great day today.  Met a new friend here.  Her name is Joelle Guilfoyle.  Her husband works at Exxon.  This is their second year here and also their first overseas assignment.  She is an awesome wealth of information.  Between she and Chris, I don't need to meet anyone else.  Although, the two of them would keep me busy everyday of the week if I did everything that they do. 

Joelle is from Pennsylvania originally but spent time in Baton Rouge, Clear Lake and Katy.  So she admits that she is truly a southener like me.  We met at the Burger King in Novena Square and had lunch.  We talked for quite a while about everything.  What to do, When to do it and who to do it with. 

After lunch we took a walk to a nearby bus stop to a nursery (plants).   They had some beautiful orchid plants and some really unusual plants.  One looked like a venus fly trap plant.  Don't know the name of it, but I've attached it to show it.

Here are som other unusual looking flowers that I thought I would share.  Take a close look at the roses.  How did they color those multicolored ones?

After we looked at flower market, we took a bus back to Joelle's condo.  It was just gorgeous.  It is hard to describe.  It was marble from head to toe.  Beautiful wool rugs everywhere with some Chinese antiques and some back home normal furniture.  It was on the 15th of 42 floors.  It had a balcony that could fit all our back yard furniture overlooking the pool the 5th floor.  Their view was not coverd with other buildings but with the only green places that I've seen.  In the distance was a polo field.  Great place.  If we had stayed in the city, I would have wanted this place for sure. 

Got back in time for Elliott to get home.  Relaxed a little until he decided that he was meeting friends going to Orchard and the American Club. 

Ernie got in about 7:30, so we rushed over to Novena to see if we could get in to get his laundry.  No dice.  They closed at 8.  Found a wonderful place to eat.  NYDC.  It had all american foods.  I had great pasta carbonara.  It was wonderful and very rich.  We headed down to the market so he could pick up some cheap wine.  I saw some Harbor Mist that was $16.  I don't think I'll ever drink over here. Ernie's bottle of wine was $27.  He won't be drinking much.

Tried to make reservations again on Singapore Air to come home in Dec.  We had major problems the last time.  It timed out on us and Ernie didn't want to do it again until we made sure that there was no charge to our account.  This time was no better.  We got on line and quickly put in all the info that we had to (3 Sets of passport info, birthday, expirations,etc, etc.)  We made the time but as soon as we got to the end and put in a credit card it was denied.  Of course, then we had to hook up the Vonage phone to call and find out why.  We were told that we had to sign up for something called Visa Verify.  The guy said that it take immediately so we got back in and went through the whole process again.   It happened again.  So we went back to call the vonage phone again and of course it was down.  Finally got a connection and the lady said it would probably take 30 minutes for Verify to set up so that may be what happened.  By this time it was 1 a.m. and we were exhausted. Going to try again in the morning.  I must say that technology is not as good as the US.  But they sure can move people around.

Night to all,

Trece