The Gathering

The girls (and two guys) came over last night. It's their first trip to our place in fact. Lots of food - sushi, sashimi, soft shell crabs, roast chicken, chicken pie from Don's, 2 pizzas, cake from Delifrance, grapes, chips, etc.

Of course, we couldn't finish them.

Elaine brought Song Joon along and they were first to arrive. Interestingly, he brought along a box of Attack washing detergent as a gift. Apparently it is Korean tradition to give washing detergent when you go to a new home -- because the bubbles formed from it signify overflowing, abundant prosperity. Interesting.....

I'd post a picture but i'm still new at this blog thing ... so it'll take me a little while to figure out how.

Phonecalls and Emails

The papers say that Meulaboh is 80% devastated. From the visuals on CNA and CNN, everything looks flat.

Adrian's called a couple of times from the satellite phone... albeit rationed tremendously. He sleeps at about 1 or 2 am and has to wake up by 5am everyday. I think he's happy doing this though... being able to help those in need. Even more fulfilling than the hospital -- where patients can possibly be very demanding and 'smart'. Well, you know what I mean.

He can actually email too! But also once in a while because that's also rationed. At least now i can send him stuff and he can read it if he's able to. :)

He called me on Friday though, to tell me that he was switching ships to the RSS Persistence, and there might be even less access to communication (phone and email). So this time, I might not even get to hear from him. But well, no news is good news! I still have Juan as a back-up.

Not sure how long this mission will take. Everyone asks me - when will Adrian be back? But i don't know... my standard answer is, "Supposed to be two weeks, but could stretch to four?"

Whatever it is, I hope he gets back in time for Layfang + Fred and Jeremy + Zhen Zhen's weddings.

Meulaboh

It's been 9 days since Adrian left for Meulaboh. 14 days since the disaster.

It was boxing day when we first saw the news of the earthquake in Sumatra. At that point in time, the magnitude of it all didn't strike us. It wasn't until the day after, that we realised how serious it had become - like a domino-rally that had disasters coming one after another.

So I asked Adrian if he was going to be activated... and he said that he wasn't sure.

28 Dec Tue, 4pm: Adrian called that he was activated and scheduled to go to Aceh, possibly on Thursday. He told me that he would be going to HQMC to attend a briefing.

29 Dec Wed: Adrian went to hospital in the morning to settle all the paperwork and handover whatever was necessary at work. Then he spent the day at HQMC for preparation. Departure the next day.

30 Dec Thu: We sent Adrian off to Nee Soon camp in the morning. The ship was supposed to set sail for Aceh at 5pm. But there was some problem with the ship, and it was postponed to the next day. That evening, we managed to head out to Chinatown and bought a Victorinox Swiss Army Knife... claypot rice for dinner at the hawker centre, and I bought a couple of party poppers, party whistles, spray streamers and an airhorn for Adrian's trip on the ship. His boss had asked him to prepare a little New Year countdown party as a motivational thingy for the guys... since they would be on board on NYE.

31 Dec Fri: We woke up at 4.30am... it was raining very heavily then. Adrian was supposed to reach camp before 6am so by 5am, we booked a cab. I sent him there, said 'bye' and watched him go into camp. He was off... this time, for real. Destination: West Aceh - Meulaboh.

After i got home, i went to rest a while before waking up to continue baking cookies to pitch into SH's bake sale/car wash drive to raise funds for the Tsunami victims. I suppose as Adrian was actually going there to help the people this was the least i could do. I baked over $200 worth (selling price) of chocolate chip cookies. I'm not sure if they were all sold, but they managed to raise about $10K in donations. Good effort!

At 2pm, Adrian called... he was about to set sail. We weren't sure if this was going to be our last phone call for the rest of his mission. The journey was going to take 40 hours from Tuas. RSS Endurance.

12 midnight: This has been my quietest New Year's Eve ever.