Singapore!

So much for my post-a-day ambitions. It's day two of our trip, and I'm writing this from the 24th floor of an apartment building in Singapore. There's a view of downtown from the living room window (when it's not too rainy to see that far), and an even better view inside, of two little girls playing with their super cute three-year-old cousin whom they met for the first time yesterday. It has been so good to stay with Jim's sister and brother-in-law (and their daughter), though I am afraid we are kind of awful guests, voracious and noisy and sleeping at all the wrong times.

The flights were...OK. I will summarize with bullet points:
- The international terminal at Vancouver, oh all ye Olympics-bound travelers, is pretty swank. Enjoy.
- Japan Airlines, please, please give your passengers on ten hour flights more food. We waited so long for that second meal to arrive, and when it became clear that all you were giving us was a half sandwich and two teensy cornichons, well, let me just say that it was a bit of a disappointment.
- All Nippon Airlines, while I am at it, if you are going to try to fix a seating issue, only to divide up a family with tiny children into one pair of seats and two singles (?), please, when you finally get the situation sort of resolved, be judicious about asking the tired, worried family to hurry into their seats. Good food, though.
- General advice for long trips with small children: you need WAY more snack food than you think. Go overboard packing snacks. At the Tokyo airport, in a sleepless haze, I ended up buying a can of Pringles to avoid that panicky feeling I was getting near the end of the last leg. They were the only food I could recognize that wasn't a cookie, or a distressingly named mystery food (like "Corn Chocolate").
- Obvious advice for international trips: you are supposed to know the address of the place you are staying. You can save yourself (and the poor relative who is picking you up in the middle of the night) a good twenty to thirty minutes of customs line time.

One more short flight this afternoon- to Kuala Lumpur. We are sad to leave our hosts behind, but happy to see Jim's parents and other relatives, and get ready for his cousin's wedding on Sunday. Plus, his sister and brother-in-law are coming for the wedding, so we will see them again tomorrow.

Hopefully the next post will include some pictures. Keep on keeping on!