Mom Says I’m Running Away

8 Hours from Flying:

So in 8 hours I will be taking off from Singapore for 18 days into Laos, Northern Thailand and Bangkok.  I’ll be meeting up with some Matador Travel friends in Chiang Mai (Northern Thailand) on the 18th of October, if you’re interested in joining leave me a comment and Ill get you all the details.

Ill also be leaving my laptop at home in the interest of carrying as little as possible and hand writing my entries and uploading when I get home, to Singapore.  So, more or less we’ll be dead here for the next couple of weeks, then you will be barraged with a couple of posts a day for the weeks that follow.

…and for those of you interested in my version of gear-light:  I have my Canon 5D, 35mm F/1.4, 135mm F/2, and my 24-105 F/4 IS. Although I was very tempted to leave the zoom at home I just couldnt manage yet— although I was very tempted to go only with my 35mm…one day I will be brave…

Anyways, happy travels to me, and Ill see you all soon!

I Just Got Here!:

It feels like I just got here (Singapore), but now I am sitting here writing this waiting for Felicia to come home from work for the weekend, and I realize in two days I am leaving again. It has only been two and half weeks but I already feel like I am at home here and now on Monday I am leaving again.  I am excited about the travel, and especially about my time in Laos, but I am going at it alone again and I will sure miss her, and all the tasty food here in Singapore.

I feel like a mixed bag of emotion, I hope the weekend doesn’t pass to quickly.  Plus I am still debating on what gear to bring along with me….

F1 Weekend:

We have decided that our weekends pass too quick.   We try to cram in everything we can, but our short time together is over as quick as it starts.  We we’re loaned a car this weekend by Felicia’s friend Kevin who was taking off to Malaysia for a wedding.  We had lunch with him when we dropped him at the airport, then proceeded to putter around to some of the harder to get to spots (without a car) drinking coffee and letting our Saturday slide by.

The first ever Formula One Nightrace took place in Singapore yesterday, and although Felicia and I were unable to get tickets into the race we did manage to score ourselves an invite to a Sentosa Yacht Club for a Maserati car show complete with a party, dinner and drinks.  Very un-Rob, hanging out in Yacht clubs, but I feel I preformed rather well.  Enjoying a few drinks, eating tiny creme brules, hanging out on the waterfront, watching high speed cars fly through downtown, etc etc…

On another note I bought a plane ticket to head up to Thailand and Laos for 18 days and I leave in a week.  I don’t think I am going to take my computer with me, which means Ill be writing out all my posts and then posting when I get back, but from what I have been reading it looks like a pretty cool area.  Now if I can only decide what camera gear to bring and still travel light….

Singapore: Midweek

Felicia’s parents are very concerned with me getting bored while she is away at work.  I constantly try to reassure them that I have so much to do on my computer, but they seem to think I am being polite and have decided to plan a few outings for us to go on while she works.  Although I also get the feeling these are things they have wanted to do for a while too, I am just being used as motivation to get out and do them.

Today (actually a few days ago, I am just lazy about blogging on time), we headed out to the far western side of Singapore to visit the Bollywood Organic Farm, and for Christina (Felicia’s mom) to prove to me that not all of Singapore is developed.  We ate organic curry and fig tea and I even convinced Arthur (Felicia’s dad) to stop and smell the flowers while we were walking between rows and rows of things like lemongrass, banana trees, jackfruits, starfruit, pineapple, dragonfruit and beans. And, of course the afternoon with me covered in a sticky humid sweat and Arthur feeding the fish at the dragonfruit farm.

Singapore; The First Weekend and the Plan

After almost three years of travel and photography you would imagine I have quite the stockpile of pictures, and guess what? You have imagined right.  Roughly 68,000 images not including about that many which I have already deleted while traveling or sometime since. It’s daunting, and I know buried in all that is the gold of a full blown career as a travel photographer.  Now I just need to find the time to get it all put together in a “will-you-hire-me?” package. That is one of the main goals of the next couple of months, go on an all our marketing assault with my images to editors and other people in need of a high quality Travel Photographer.

Oh, and in a couple of weeks here I am planning a short (2 1/2 weeks) sojourn to Laos and Northern Thailand to fill my computer with even more pictures to work on.

So, Felicia has a job and I, a mission.  Which means our weekends are precious because they are the bulk of the time we get to spend together here in Singapore.  It also means if we have anything we have to do, this is when it has to be squeezed in. Our first Saturday together launched us right into being busy, running all over the city-state to accomplish all sorts of tasks, the most important of which was a tie between hitting Ikea to replace her 3ft (90cm) wide bed with something bigger and meeting up with her Cantonese speaking grandmother for the first time and laying all my charm on her (aka lots of smiles and my best lack of western ignorance).  She seemed fairly pleased, so something I did on accident must have worked.

Singaporean Jetlag:

So I may have bitched about it in the past, but Asia is far. Damn far. So far in fact that upon arrival it leaves me out of commission for days. When I left on Tuesday morning I had got to the airport in Ontario (California, not Canada) I was about 4 hours early because that’s when Ed could give me a ride on his way to work. When I walked up to the United counter the woman there glared at me and curtly asked “San Francisco?”

“Uh… yeah.”

“We’ll see if we can get you on it…” she replied.

“…but I’m not for four hours…”

Her attitude quickly changed and instead of being angry at my tardiness, she complimented my being early and rushed to put me on an the earlier flight that just seconds before she didn’t think I would make. I guess the 9:55am that I was supposed to be on was gonna be late and I wouldn’t have any connection problems if I jumped right on this one. She rushed my boarding passes out and told me to hurry. And, thus, the never-ending day began.

By never-ending I actually just mean about 27 hours of travel from my door in California to Felicia’s home in Singapore at midnight local time.  When I was finally there and had a little while to calm down from all the travel, it was time to crash out for the night, seeing how Felicia had to be off to work in the morning.  I didn’t sleep at all that night, my brain being fried from all the traveling.  When Felicia headed off the next morning I was still wide awake.  I proceeded to unpack and get things in order in my future wife’s 12th floor room.  I found that she was worried about me starving and had stocked up prior to my arrival so I wouldn’t be out any of the staples of my diet, primary peanut butter, wheat bread, refried beans, tortillas, tea, and Tim-Tams (The Worlds Most Irresistible Chocolate Biscuit) .  Its like a Rob-based natural disaster survival kit!

Thursday and Friday passed quickly with me sleeping through most of the two days, I was able to get a walk around a bit and find Pasir Ris Park (my new neighborhood) and shopping center.  Felicia had also saved  me some Mooncakes from the recent Mooncake Festival, Yum! (sorry Ed).

A Californian Summer Re-Cap:

So, as you have most likely noticed, my blog has been pretty dead since Felicia and I returned from South America.  The summer went buy quicker than ever and I became the busiest “unemployed” person ever.  Getting to know her better, getting engaged, shooting a few weddings, having a camera lens stolen from me -my 70-200mm f/2.8- (which was insured), having to say goodbye and watch her head home last month, and finally having a little spill on my new-ish motorcycle last week.

I am doing good though, a little lonely without her around and a little scratched up from the asphalt, but good nonetheless. We are planning our wedding for next summer and things are looking up in life.

Now for the really good part!  I am flying off tomorrow morning to head back to Singapore to meet up with Felicia and become part of her life there for the next three months.  I have never lived abroad in one place for so long before and am really interested to find how close I can get into the Singaporean culture.  Also I am planning a few weeks of side trips around the Southeast Asian region during that time too!  So keep you eyes peeled, and come back from time to time because new adventures are on their way!

 An Unknown Day:

I know many of you saw it coming, but we’re still rather excited.

Thanks Randy for the picture.

Summer 2008:

Yes, I am still alive. Yes, I will be going somewhere soon.

My apologizes for my internet silence, but I have been shooting a few weddings lately and have found it keeps me behind my computer quite a bit.

Day: 424

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Two days ago we returned home, beat up and weary from the last three months on the road. The next morning after arriving home in the middle of the night I was sitting on the couch, when my step dad, Mike, asked me; “This seemed to be your hardest trip yet, huh?”.

I sat there and thought about it for a moment and the memories of constant illness (between Felicia and I, one of us was in such bad shape we couldn’t leave our room for about a third of the trip), The horrible weather and constant rains we had in Ecuador, The bus ride with me vomiting out the window for 16 hours, the constant looking over our shoulder for someone who might be following us or waiting to “bump” into us and relieve us of our things, the stress of knowing that every meal you eat might ruin your day, and the constant pressures of trying to build a healthy and loving relationship in the midst of all this. The stress throughout this last trip was heavy and Mike might have been right when he called it my “hardest trip yet”…

Then I sat there for a moment longer, and let all the good experiences wash over me; seeing the sunrise over Colca Canyon with the girl I love beside me and condors flying over me, the local Chinese immigrant we found in a Chinese food restaurant in Rurrenbaque who sat and spoke with Felicia in Chinese for an hour about how he sees the local culture, riding horses through the sunscorched deserts of Tupiza with a 15-year old guide, climbing around the inside of the old Bolivar theater with a excited local telling about his efforts to have it restored after a fire swept through it, and hundreds of other perfect moment Felicia and I would never have experienced if we hadn’t put ourselves out there in the midst of all this strife to try and find tidbits of life and excitement.

I am happy to be at home right now, its relaxing and comforting to sleep in my own bed and have clean food in the fridge… but I don’t think it will be long before I start planning and scheming on how to get away again and put myself through untold misery, to find the passion that I live my life for.

Tomorrow I turn 29. I glance back and see that a year ago I celebrated in Tibet with a bottle of vodka and had know Felicia a week. A year later as I write this and she is peacefully sleeping in my bed 5 feet away, 8829 miles from her home and, although I can tell at times she is horribly homesick for Singaporean street food, I want to thank her here for putting up with me for the last year and coming to be with me. We are unsure what the future holds for us (we are both near broke at the moment), but we are holding each other as we plunge into life.