Swedish Christmas Dinner aka Julbord with Asians

On Tuesday night the whole office went to the Swedish Christmas dinner arranged by SBAS and the embassy. I was actually impressed they could arrange so much of the typical traditional swedish food in the tropics including crisp bread, herring(s!) and lingonberry jam. 200 persons made it to the event which included glögg, mingle and loads of food.
The funniest thing was to watch my dear collegues doing things "wrongly", one just knows how certain things should be made or consumed while they fail lol
We even got some snaps and singing in, greatly appreciated by the others. Appreciated was also the arrival of Lucia ("what are they supposed to be, angels?" "is it christian or catholic?"), a tradition I found hard to explain. They were pretty good though and did everything right, even the cheating notes on the candle holders were there :)

It's been lots and lots of work this last week before office closes and everyone leaves around the 22nd. I've been working with City Centre and Al-Rigga stations in Dubai, and the residential here in Singapore while finishing up the hotel complex in Dehli. Gaah, and it's not getting less. On Thursday night I caught the moment to visit Style:Nordic and get some ginger breads and a bit of relaxed chatting just to get away from work.

This weekend has been so slack, just to rest before the final days at work. Leaving on Thursday night, hey, and I started packing last night because there will be no time for that during the week.

Have to do some washing now, more writing later.

working pass!

First of all, I eventually recieved my working pass last week which means I can start working. Somehow I can now understand what it must feel like for a refugee to recieve a permanent visa in a new country after eons of waiting and numbers of rejections. With a nicely plasted working pass I could also open a bank account ( now have accounts in four countries, switzerland here I come...!) and have a bank card.

Secondly, I had more visitors just as Anna left (läs Annas resdagbok). Calle and Jocke came on a three day visit from Thursday to Saturday. Calle is doing the same course as I did in Jönköping and wanted to see some of our projects and a bit of singapore while travelling in SE asia. No probs for me so we had a chat at my office and went to some places downtown. Friday night was spent at enormous Vivocity where we planned to watch the new Bond. Due to small theatres (only 600+...), or perhaps LOTS of people it was sold out and we ended up on Deja Vu instead. Despite some crappy time travels it was really cool and the story actually held all the way through.
On Saturday night we (me, Lester my deskmate, and a pack of CouchSurfers) went to ZoukOut, supposed to be one of the biggest dance parties in Asia... how does this sound:
1 beach
4 stages
12 hours
many bands
20000 visitors
S$1.5 million budget

And in fact, the trance stage was the best! I was really quite surprised. They did have an amazing laser show, but even without it, it was great. Met some fantastic people too, that I hope I can see again soon.
Didn't come home until well after half 7 on sunday morning, so I had breakfast at 3 in the afternoon haha!! Not much else was achieved on sunday, of natural reasons. And of course, since this was in SG, the place was pretty drugless.

Monday morning we eventually got our new computer that have been due "next week" since I arrived here... Great big nice monitor and pretty quick too. The best thing is that it worked at least until 6 before crashing -as in dying. Totally dead, doesn't even start. Support guy from Lenovo is supposed to arrive tomorrow, lets see - I'm being slightly cynical...
Anyway, we have 8 more metro stations in Dubai before the 21st (also the day I'm leaving for holidays). I also need to finish the residential (the one with 3.6m deep fibre optic lit pool with glass wall into the home cinema room...) here in singapore, keep an eye on the hotel in Dehli and prepare some sketches for Louis Vuitton coming shopwindows in China *sigh* there goes my time...

Last but not least, we've got monkeys in our back yard!

Visits and visitors

Weeks really do fly here. It's been more than a week again and it feels like two days!
Mingled with an italian maffia boss last week (at least he looked like one in the white suite and a real donna on his side) at the showroom opening. Great champagne and catering food. Products and business? Yeah, did some of that too of course.
Lester came in real late next morning, and had hardly any voice lol. we kindly reminded him about the waiters he'd been hitting on the night before
I headed over to the meeting with Swedish Business Association Singapore, Style:Nordic and Young Professionals on Thursday night to meet up with some scandinavians, mingle with the ambassador and talk about fair trade palm oil plantations in Ghana and Senegal (for use as bio diesel in europe, project run by a company in Uppsala) -interesting.

First Friday of the month is always happy hour and this friday was having a japanese theme as November had a Swedish touch with meatballs from IKEA, Absolut and plastic cups från Duni. Time will tell wether jan/feb will be mexican as suggested. Old classmate Anna also came on Friday night after chilling out on Bali for a week. Coming back to crowded civilisation after staying on a boat for three months was a bit of a chock but all passed without trouble. We headed out to Sentosa and "enjoyed" the beautiful beach (view: 150 giant cargo ships and refineries) and the "natural" touch of the tiny island. Some american journalist summarized Singapore into "It's like Disneyland with the death penalty" and Sentosa is a summary of Singapore, without the death penalty hmmm

Anyway, we headed on to Chinatown, Little India and Orchard Road before going home (long day!). Sunday included a run up to singapores highest point (natural, not man made) and not much more. Anna stayed here until today when she headed up to malacca for more backpacking. I'm not lonely though since two guys from my old uni in Jönköping just came around. They'd like to see some interesting lighting around here so I'll do my best :)

It's only like two weeks before I head back to Europe for xmas/ny which feels totally crazy. So many deadlines before that! And I need to find a new place to stay, gaah, how's this gonna work. Hope it'll be all right...

By the way, I'm getting small messages from Australia about the annual climbing trip to the Blue Mountains outside sydney. 35 people in one house last w'end! Wish I'd been there