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The Third Lap

This is a repost of my blog entry on Rose City Transplants.
It was originally posted on Sept 16, 2015.

September the 11th.  For Americans, it’s a date that carries a lot of memories and sorrow.  It also carries with it a rising level of jingoistic rhetoric and overly patriotic statements, the tragedy too large, I think, for our sound-bite culture to digest properly, too real to be actual memory.  It’s a political day, as all events in the US are, it seems, as politicians reach out to their base with varying levels of thinly veiled xenophobia or condemnations/accusations of such.

Okay, enough of my fatigue of American politics.

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Singapore, And How to Sling It

This is a repost of my blog entry on Rose City Transplants.
It was originally posted on March 14, 2016.

One story below us in one of the few parts of Singapore that resembles a proper grid, the lights came on. While the city didn’t cool as much as one would expect as the sun fell1and rarely does, truth be told, an orchestrated dance of fans, some styled to resemble those from a more, colonial time, moved the air above us, cooled the room with the peanut-shell covered floor, proved proof against sweat in a city covered with it.

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Without Justice

This is a rewrite of my blog entry on Rose City Transplants.
It was originally posted on September 28, 2015.

My legs are stiff and sore, the result of climbing countless steps on our journey to heaven.  Many of the great temples of Angkor are designed as representations of Mount Meru, the holy mountain of the Hindu, Buddhist and Jainist faiths, the five spires of the temples symbolizing the five peaks of the mountain.  The most famous of these temples, Angkor Wat, the largest religious building in the world, looks like it only has three spires when viewed straight on, but it too is a symbol of heaven on earth. We stood in queue to climb to the top of that building, waiting our turn to see heaven.

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The Worst Day of the Year

This is a repost of my blog entry on Rose City Transplants.
It was originally posted February 9, 2015.

It was the sight of a couple, riding a bicycle built for two, wearing bug eyes and antennas that broke a storm of weeping for the city we’ve come to love.  I couldn’t help but laugh, how much more Portland could that have been?  It was something straight out of Portlandia, us in the car, her crying at the sight of two weird denizens on their silly bike.  Clouds rolled overhead and the wet streets reflected whatever sun was available.  It was the worst day of the year.

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The Art of Transplanting Roses

This is a repost of my inaugural blog entry from Rose City Transplants.
It was originally posted on January 15, 2015.

It was sometime late October when she had something to say.  She’s reserved, so much so that she likely will dislike my sharing that fact, but her reservation is never more present when she thinks confrontation looms.  She is to be forgiven for fear, however, because what she was about to say would start one of the most important conversations of our lives.

She was testing the waters of a move to Singapore.

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