Singapore with Shane Shane Shane

Shane picks me up, with coffee!

Well "yesterday" was a blur - I arrived in Singapore by noon and chugged down an icy coffee from none other than Starbucks Singapore with Mr. Shane. We hopped a taxi to downtown (halfway across the country) and tried the best chicken rice hole-in-the-wall available according to our trusty taxi driver. Funny dragging a huge suitcase through the narrow streets but Shane was a happy helper mule to the rescue (his words, not mine!).

Chicken Rice, Lettuce

Chicken rice has got to be the most popular dish around - it's just chicken + rice. We also ordered blindly off the Mandarin menu and ended up with pan friend lettuce and chow fun noodles (slurped up before I could get a picture). Back on campus we grabbed a few Tigers and sat out by the track watching runners brave the afternoon heat and fly-overs from the neighboring military aviation installment. It was awesome. We got the most entertainment from a runner-cum-interpretive-dancer who jog-danced his way around the track while appearing to also conduct the concert he was hearing in his oversized earphones. It was 89-degrees and 95% humidity when he launched into an impressive series of ab exercises that left us feeling exhausted and fully worked out by the power of osmosis. The rest of last night is equally blurry, I enjoyed a long nap in Shane's dorm while he was off studying - I haven't been (or slept) in a dorm for 10 years! I forgot how fun college campus was back in the day - GWU didn't really have a campus and the buildings were mostly overshadowed by important government monstrosities. It's Shane's first time living on campus, too, so we're running around enjoying the various canteens and learning (getting lost on) the campus loop shuttle. 

Mystery Pau

The NDU campus itself is beautiful and tropical with lots of indoor/outdoor space, 15+ canteens, and an active student body. I spent the morning eating various Pau buns, chosen at random by the lady working at the breakfast counter. Quick Skype test to the homeland (worked great!) and off to do some work at Global Cafe. We never had a place this cool at UCSD for studying - it was like a hip lobby at the coolest hotel downtown, but cozy and friendly. And with another Starbucks attached!

Mystery solved: two pork, one veggie. I think.

And then more lunchtime grub with Shane to break up his seven (yes, 7!) hours of managerial accounting. Yikes.

Vegetarian Delight!

Nom nom. Chicken rice.

If you know me well, which you do if you're reading this, then you may have also guessed that all of this detail and random knowledge about not a lot of ongoings, so far, is the product of yet another Pilram procrastination session. With that, I'll head back to my missing management paper (technically GWU won't let me graduate without it!) and then out on the town. The next few days will bring more excitement with the arrival of another California visitor and some fun bars and nights out in the city. The lowest rooftop bar we're planning to hit is on the 20th floor and the highest is 100+ floors up. Stay tuned...!

Workin' Hard @NTU

No Tuesday

Well the adventure(s) begin again...! After 14.5 hours of flying, finally on land again temporarily in Hong Kong in transit to Singapore en route to Calbayog, Philippines via Manila where I'll hop on the USNS Mercy for 3.5 months of research and writing. Armed with a newly minted MPH in Global Health and a one-way ticket I'm excited but also anxious, nervous, and all the other feelings that accompany a big leap into the unknown.

Last night was yet another bittersweet good bye to the Pilram family, just when I was settling back into home again. It was 1 am Tuesday when I departed and 5:30 am Wednesday when I landed here, rendering Tuesday non-existent. The funny thing about crossing that dateline and popping up in another world and zone! It was also freezing and drizzling in San Francisco as we took off into the fog but it's already 85 here and humid enough to appear foggy... But looks can be deceiving and the heat mixtures and convective currents made for anything but a smooth approach. Given the heat, and fashion-forward culture of this shiny airport, my sweatpant-chic look appropriate in San Francisco, complete with black fleece, is unacceptable in Hong Kong! Into the trendy shorts, sandals, and blazer all in the name of fitting in. Which of course I dont!

Out of time, now boarding for Singapore... Onward!

Day with the vets in Nicaragua

As we round out the Guatemala stop I'm feeling re-motivated about the project and catching up on posts. Our internet on the ship is 1980s slow (yep, it actually predates the invention of the world wide web) which makes it tough to keep up with the outside world. So I'll mention it here and move on... Here are some pictures from my day with the veterinarian team. We started with a 1-hour ride through the muddy and roadless jungle to reach a central ranch where local farmers brought their stallions (unbroken horses) and a few cows for deworming treatment. While not the most sustainable intervention, from the vets' perspectives, the emerging theme of the mission is to arrive with what you have and do what you can. An unexpected bonus of this particular stop was the opportunity for the vets to talk with the local group about more effective and kind handling of their animals. The vet part of the mission has been an interesting group to study. They often work in the most rural regions of each stop and have close interactions with the local population. In many of these countries agriculture is an economic driver, supporting the majority of the rural community. From a public health perspective there are some interesting links. Health-wise, animal to human transmission can be a significant issue for the spread of disease, from handling of live animals to meat for market. The healthier the animals, the better the meat, better price, and subsequent economic opportunities for farmers. Additional income also has links to people's access to care. Although our medical mission is to support the public health system, the reality in these parts is that of the private sector health system, especially in rural areas. So healthy animals = healthy owners = enhanced access to the market = potential for increased access to healthcare. Of course the expatriates are not lost on the benefits of cheap labor + land and own large parts of the sector as well so that a few own a large percentage of the wealth. For our vet team, this has presented a challenge when the MoA-identified farms are not necessarily those most in need. Another challenge for our vets is a complete lack of supplies or contacts needed to complete more sustainable and useful serviceable. This theme to be explores further in my report but needless to say it was an eye-opening experience. As you can see from the pics it was a hot, muddy, and sometimes dangerous day. But in the end we all learned more about local practices, checked our own expectations, and did the best work possible. I very much enjoyed the opportunity to get off the ship and look forward to my next fieldtrip with the vets, a great and often overlooked part of the mission.

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