That’s where I am. Well, I guess technically, I’m on the other side of the earth all the time for someone. But today, I’m on the other side of the Earth from those who live in the U.S. Well, not exactly, the exact other side would be somewhere near Venezuela. The opposite end of the Earth from where 90% of Americans live is.. the Indian Ocean, so technically, I’d have to take a boat South of here a couple thousand miles. But you get the picture… I’m far away.
Well, so far I’ve seen a very nice hotel room. Today is filled with work catching up on some unfinished projects, preparing for tomorrow’s workshop, meeting with the conference organizers, etc.
I’m not going to have much time to get out of my hotel today. But it is a REALLY nice room (they conference organizers have paid for it), 900 sq ft, huge bath tub and separate shower, king size bed, separate living area.
Anyway, I do plan to go out and see the city. I’m getting oriented today and tomorrow is the workshop all day, but Sunday I have the afternoon free (the talks are not in my area of expertise or something useful for us), so a colleague and I are going to go 
explore street hawker food! He really wants to try durian and I want to try it again (had it once with Guy in Thailand).
I know Emma will be excited to try durian. Every night I used to tell a story of goldilocks and the three bears travelling to some part of the world (long story on how that got started) and after travelling to many places over many nights.. I told of them going to Thailand (elephant rides, thai massage, temples…) and ended up with them trying durian. Emma thought a fruit that smells like dirty diapers but tastes faintly of bubble gum was the most hilarious thing she’d ever heard of. I had to tell that story about a hundred times. When we get to Bali she’ll get to try some 
.
Oh, one other thing I just learned about durian. Our host here in Singapore (a scientist with the genome institute here) doesn’t like durian (imagine!?!) but she said that one is supposed to eat a mangosteen after eating durian to ‘equalize the digestion’. Didn’t know that . Well, guess we will have to do that! In fact, I might just spend an afternoon eating fruits of various sorts. I had one at breakfast today with a purple skin and white flesh with black seeds. Very pretty. Kinda bland but tasty. Interesting… don’t know what it was still. Need to take my camera down to breakfast tomorrow. You won’t believe the complimentary breakfast served at the hotel… not continental to say the least. I didn’t know what half of it was.
Anyway, my colleague and I will be going out to sample the unique street foods with influences of Chinese, Indian, Malay and other cultures. I’ll let you know how that goes. I’m just trying to make sure I can keep my tasting down to 30 points (weightwatchers 
. We’ll see.
I’ll have time later in the week to check out a few other places, China town, India town, etc.
, but having been interested in the science a few years ago, I read it with interest. My take on it was that it seemed to be a bit reactionary. That’s fine. Our culture, any culture, does have it’s pushy moments. She seemed to have a chip on her shoulder about the ‘fascist’ breast-feeding advocacy in our culture and what it means in her life. She made a statement though, that from my reading of the research, seemed a bit mistaken:
