Winter break has started!  Most international schools in Southeast Asia have three-week breaks, and SAS is no exception.  So I have time hang out in Singapore and then host my sister for her first trip to Asia (she arrives on Thursday, and we’ll be going to Cambodia).  It’s nice to feel like I have time to relax and not do much — though I’m not very good at sitting still, so the relaxing notion is largely hypothetical.  And Prescott does not share my vacation schedule, so he’ll be at work for part of the next few weeks.

Yesterday Prescott and I walked to the Bukit Timah hawker stall and wet market to buy fruits and veggies, go to the tailor, and have breakfast.  Prescott practiced his left handed chopstick skills (this is far harder than it looks);

We spent the afternoon at the grungy indie theater we like.  We went to see Your Name, one of the highest-grossing films of all time in Japan.  It’s a good movie, if a bit confusing by the end (there’s time travel and random body switching between the two main characters, a combination that is enough to puzzle anyone).  We’d seen La La Land the night before, which we liked much better — we recommend it highly.  Tonight we’ll be rounding out the movie-a-day vacation schedule by heading to Rogue One in IMAX 3D.  

We haven’t found a lot of time to watch movies since we arrived in Singapore, but I have had many hours to read books on the bus (and if I’m alone in the afternoon, I also read on the walk to the bus and then home).  Some recommendations from my most recent stack of books:

• In the Adult Section:  When Breath Becomes Air  (good for crying on the bus); Blood, Bones, & Butter (a good reminder of why I wanted to be a professional chef and why I’m really happy I didn’t become one); The Emperor of Scent (though you have to be ready for some pretty heavy layperson science); Orphan Train (a real page-turner)
• Young Adult Stuff:  Wolf by Wolf (thrilling); All American Boy (a depressing yet hopeful reminder of life in Baltimore); The Crossover (more crying on the bus)
• Kids’ Books: Anne of Green Gables (I’m amazed that I’d never read this before); Some Writer! (a beautifully compiled biography of E.B. White, who once wrote an essay called “Mr. Forbush’s Friends”); A Snicker of Magic (wonderful for word lovers)

I’ve been reading cookbooks, too — our school library has an impressive supply, and I’ve been expanding my range of Asian dishes.  But last night Prescott and I went out and had fancy Turkish food with lovely cocktails at a restaurant called Fat Prince (if you go there, try the fried cauliflower, the homemade orange and cardamom soda with a shot of whiskey, and a drink called The Constant Gardener).  Prescott found a new way to photo bomb my selfies: