Flight Time!

Travel for me is more of a mental attitude than a physical relocation.  By that, I mean I go into “airplane mode” to get through it and prepare for a smooth arrival.  This means resetting my watch to my arrival time as soon as sitting down in my seat (drives Julie nuts).  It also means pushing to reset my body clock right away.  For this San Francisco to Hong Kong flight, it meant eating dinner (again) at 1 am SFO time / 5pm Hong Kong.  That meant bedtime 90 minutes later.

Singapore Air business class is quite nice.  At 6’6” when the bed is made I can sleep on either side or on my back.  Being tired, having a glass of shiraz with dinner, watching La La Land with sound canceling headphones—all with a ½ an Ambien chaser--meant almost 7 hours of sleep on my way to Hong Kong.

I woke up in plenty of time to re-watching what I missed in La La Land and then had the time to watch Jackie.

Landing in Singapore was a little different this time know that was not for just a few days.  I had my folder full of paperwork from the Ministry of Manpower and the immigration officer worked it very quickly.  Walking out of immigration/customs I saw me name on a placard: Brain Hamilton (close enough).

I was quickly checking in to my serviced apartment (PanPacific Beach Road). 

Rooftop infinity pool and view

 

 

 

 

It’s compact, efficient, and well located.  The worst thing about traveling was unpacking in my new apartment.  Two big suitcases and one smaller one backed to the gills.  I needed to find a place of everything, including my empty suitcases.



Tortillas!

A quick nap and then walking the neighborhood.  Found a yakatori stand in a nearby shopping mall for dinner, which was surprisingly cheap and good.  Wandered through Cold Storage, a Singaporean supermarket chain with many (not all) of the food comforts from home.

Tomorrow will be the first day of working in Singapore.

What am I doing?  Next month I turn 58 years old and NOW is when I take on a new adventure?  For those of you that don’t know I have accepted a temporary assignment for at least 3 months with in Singapore.

Professionally it’s a great opportunity that I am looking forward to.  I will be running our risk and authentication products in Asia Pacific (these are the tools used to protect you from credit card fraud).  I will be working with Visa staff and clients around Asia and already have trips scheduled to India, China and Korea (South, not North—although I panicked a bit when I saw the meeting was in Peyongchang and thought it was Pyongyang).  I met my new boss in Dubai a couple of weeks ago and again last week in Foster City—it’s going to be great.

Personally, it’s an opportunity as well.  Ten years ago we saw Asia as a place to go maybe once or twice.  Now we have visited Myanmar (Burma), Hong Kong, Singapore, Bali (Indonesia) and Japan (without Christopher).  And there is so much more to see.  If everything works out this could be a longer-term position and Julie and Christopher would move down as well.  

I am lucky to have this opportunity due to the support of my family, friends, and Visa.  Singapore is a great place to visit and live.  Yes it’s hot and humid ALL of the time, but it is and always has been a collection of cultures from all over.  It is centrally located and places like Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos are very short flights away.  And you can drive to Malaysia or take a one hour ferry to Indonesia.

We decided to create a blog for this adventure—Our Sing Fling (http://oursingfling.blogspot.com/ ). We will see if we have the discipline to keep it up.  But I will be posting on Facebook as well, just not posting as much as on the blog.  Living halfway around the world (almost) doesn’t mean we can’t communicate.