Blogging in my brain for the next ten days...

Adios! Headed to Sri Lanka tomorrow at 7am to go to a ten day silent Buddhist retreat in Kandy - AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
I'm trying to talk my face off tonight to try to get talking out of my system. ;) Hopefully I still wanna blog and communicate when I get back and don't decide it is better to just zip it forever. xoxooxoxo HBOX

Singapore Slingshot!

Nerdy picture of me drinking Singapore's signature cocktail: the slingshot! I was at a fancy hotel where the cocktail was created called Raffles. At the bar I happened to be sitting next to three people who were all there alone who were ALL FROM THE EAST BAY!! How weird is that?! Oakland, San Leandro and Concord - what are the odds?!

Went into a small Taoist Buddhist temple next door to my hostel today and met VIOLET! Violet is a 60 year old Singaporean Buddhist who, in two hours, taught me more about religion than I learned in my whole life! When I get back from Sri Lanka (where I go to a ten day silent Buddhist retreat) and Japan (where I will visit my 86 year old great uncle who is a Catholic priest) I will write an entry, Religion 101 from someone who knew nothing about religion two months ago, if you are interested.

Anyway, Violet drove me in her hybrid out to this amazing temple in the picture above - it was HUGE! It was actually two temples side by side - one Taoist and one Buddhist. We stopped by a market on the way and had fishballs and noodles - so awesome!

Wilson Ang, founder of ECO Singapore, invited me to a meeting tonight of the coordinating teams for ECO Singapore's Earth Hour action. Earth hour is a global event where people will turn off their lights for one hour at 8:30pm Saturday March 27 to show their personal commitment to help stop climate change. Above is the pic of the meeting.

I had tears in my eyes listening to all these young people plan - I was SO impressed. They have recruited and signed up over 1,000 volunteers (mostly high school students) to go door to door on Saturday to educate people about climate change, ask them to participate in Earth Hour and invite people to attend one of the five events they are putting on in every district of the city! Check out more info at Eco Singapore. Young people across the world are going to save this planet - I tell you.

How nice? SOOOOO nice.

That little person on the sign feels bad for inconveniencing me...that is just start of how nice people have been to me here. I just wanna wear a t-shirt that says "THANK YOU - THAT WAS SO NICE OF YOU!"

It is SO hot in Singapore and everybody seems to be totally okay with it...wearing jeans, eating spicy foods in the hot sun. I was dying I was so hot. This guy made me feel better - if I wasn't wearing a dress I definitely would have gone for the t-shirt tuck like him.

Ummm, was on a flight to Hong Kong for 13 hours today. On hour eight, when I thought it was the middle of the night and we were over the Pacific, I opened the window and saw this?!!! AMAZING - right?! In Singapore now - goooood night!