Writer's Notebook - James Rafferty Blog

Writer's Notebook: Notes from Singapore Trip

A while back, I took my first trip to Singapore for business.  I've been meaning to write about the experience, but I've been rather busy since my return.  But I did take a number of colorful photos, so I'll talk a little about the trip and share a few of the photos. 

First, here is how we got there.  We flew the biggest bird in the air today, the Airbus 380.  Here is what it looked like:

    

Inside, the legroom was about the same in the coach section as I'm accustomed to, but there are power outlets at very seat, a wireless Local Area Network (not quite activated yet) and an extensive list of video and audio entertainment options.  So, the plane was well appointed, but after 12 hours, I was delighted to get out and walk on terra firma again. 

As we drove into the city, we passed a number of older areas that featured small shops, visually reminiscent of the Chinatowns I've seen in various cities.  But as we got closer to the city center, I saw much more modern architecture.  We stayed at a modern hotel which featured a restaurant with an excellent western style breakfast buffet and had a large rooftop swimming pool.  About one hour after arrival, I was swimming in pool and enjoying the comfortable temperatures (about 75 degrees F in the late morning).  

Later, a group of us walked over to Orchard Street, which is one of the main shopping areas in downtown Singapore.  At street level, there were gift shops, men's tailors for shirts and suits, and many other types of storefronts.  A few among our group bought gifts to bring back home and we took many photographs.  Here is an example of what we saw:  

On this same street, we walked past the presidential palace, where military personnel screened every car entering into a gated compound.  The grounds had gardens in full bloom, offering a counterpoint to the extensive concrete plazas in front of nearby shopping malls.   By now, the humidity had kicked in, so I broke a sweat even when walking in shaded areas. 

That evening, a few of my local colleagues took me out to a seafood restaurant on the waterfront.  We began the dinner with a round of drinks and I made my first acquaintance with the local draft beer Tiger.   The specialty of the restaurant was local seafood, including the well-known pepper crabs.  These were messy to eat, since the claws were covered with a sticky, and spicy hot batter.   I found myself drinking lots of beer and water both to put out the fire from the spicy food and to fight the effects of dehydration from the long flights.  By the end of the evening, my jaw was dropping from lack of sleep.  I had no trouble dropping off into a deep sleep shortly after I got back to the hotel that night. 

I felt much better the next day after sleeping about 10 hours and once again enjoyed the extensive breakfast.  I took advantage of nice touches like fresh squeezed orange juice and smoked salmon, along with a wide range of fresh fruits including more exotic types like mangos and papayas.  And of course, plenty of coffee.  We had choices of lattes, capuccino or strong coffee -- I seem to remember having both a coffee and latte on this particular morning. 

We had a full day of meetings, but our reward was a boat excursion on the harborfront that evening.  We went past a fountain showing off the lion which is the symbol of Singapore and then continued on through a series of inland waterways.  

 

We also got to see Singapore's massive work in progress, a very futuristic casino whose progress has been slowed by the world's recently weak economy. 

 

The boat eventually deposited us at Clarke Quay. 

We set off on foot and snaked through the crowds enroute to our destination for the evening, a Balinese restaurant.  Our large group sat down as a series of long tables.  After ordering drinks -- with a choice of beers and wine -- the dishes began to arrive.  The food was served family style.  Large platters included delicacies like large prawns, soups, local greens and much, much more.  Soon I was full, but the food kept on coming, one tasty dish after another.  At one point, a few of us stepped outside and delighted in the supple movements of a very talented belly dancer. 

After dinner, the urge to walk off a few calories attracted me, so I joined a group that took a walk back to the hotel. 

 
 
 We got turned around a couple of times, but after 20 minutes we were back in the Orchard Street area where the hotel is.  Our group settled in for a couple more beers, then I called it a night.  I'll write more about the trip and include one more picture on my next post. 

Writer's Notebook: A Trip to London Town

In January, business trips took me around the world.  Over the next week or so, I'll do a series of posts on the trips and the places I saw. 

First stop, London.  I'd come down with a cold over the weekend, so I dreaded having to fly under those conditions.  My strategy: take decongestants, drink lots of water and hope for the best.  I had an aisle seat and we flew during the day.  Happily, the nasty headaches and ear pressure I've sometimes experienced under these circumstances never materialized.  A van met our group at the airport, but one of our colleagues came in on a different flight to another terminal.  That added an hour to our trip -- Heathrow is huge and the best way to get around between terminals is by train.   We finally got into London at about 12:00 midnight and heard about the tragic Haiti earthquake just as we landed.  Much of the gang went out to drink, but I repaired to my room, nursed my cold and got a few hours sleep. 

I woke up the next morning and it looked like this.  Snow had fallen overnight and the inclement weather limited the visibility in our location on the Thames by the Tower Bridge.   

 

The local people told us that it had been snowing a great deal in the prior few days; we were just catching the tail end of it. 

Our meetings kept us busy during the day.  The first evening, our group went out to a medieval dinner experience.  We checked our coats and then were given outfits to wear right out of the middle ages.  In the spirit of things, I decided to try the beer, but whatever they were serving was godawful -- it tasted liked it had been sitting in barrels for ages and had gone rancid.  Nonetheless, we had a fun evening.  We were instructed in the proper behavior for guests in that era.  Whenever the King suggested a toast, we were to yell out: Wasail!  We practiced and got very good at this, though it failed to improve the taste of the beer.   We all sat down at long metal tables and were served community style.  When it was time for the next course of food, we made the requests by banging our fists on the tables.  We also adapted to this very quickly.  

In between rounds of food -- a murky soup served without benefit of spoons and hunks of chicken -- the court jesters did juggling tricks and the merry wenches danced with curtsies and displays of petticoats.  Bottom line:  a medieval banquet is a fair excuse to serve bland food and copious amounts of cheap alcohol, but the theatrical aspect of the evening sticks with you the longest. 

London is often foggy and we never did see the sun in our time there.  Here's another view looking out from the hotel across the river. 

Our meeting continued the next day and I managed to get all of my presentations done despite my sore throat. In fact, I had begun to recover from the cold.  That evening, we ate in at the hotel and this time the food was much better.   The salads were fresh and the main dishes offered real taste.  The wine also flowed in ample quantities, keeping spirits upright.  Afterwards, we engaged in a Nintendo WII driving competition.  I was not overly concerned when my vehicle spun out and went in the wrong direction, allowing me to head back to the room before midnight. 

The next morning, we had a fine buffet breakfast -- the breakfasts were consistently good throughout our stay -- as the combination of coffee, orange juice, smoked salmon and fresh fruit prepared me for the day ahead.  On this day, we had a customer meeting, but it was in walking distance, so we finally got to leave the hotel again.  We were in the financial district, which is not nearly as robust as it was before the financial crash, but managed to be quite lively on this morning.  After sitting in meetings for two days, the walk was refreshing. 

The meeting went reasonably well, and then we retraced our steps back to the hotel.  Our contingent was getting ready to leave, but we got to say our goodbyes over a light lunch.  By now, the weather had improved somewhat, but clouds still dominated the sky. 

Our route back entailed travel via the underground and by train.  We walked past the Tower of London, which looked very different than it had during my tourist visit during the Eighties.  Visitors now enter via a modern glass pavilion, analogous to the experience one has across the channel when visiting the Louvre in Paris.   New buildings, construction and the much older structures of the Tower collided visually as we walked by enroute to our station. 

In the station itself, we encountered the new phenomenon of the electronic ticket kiosques which fail to accept American credit cards, since most Euro cards now include a validation chip.  Our US bankers, showing off their wonderful sense of customer service, don't see the problem.  Right.  Why am I so surprised?  

Anyway, the regular ticket takers still accepted old school credit cards, so one of our group bought tickets for the underground for all of us.  We headed downstairs to board the Circle Line train headed for Paddington Station.  We no sooner got downstairs than an announcement from the speakers blared a message that the Circle Line train would not be running on the weekend.  After several other trains came by and there was no sign of the Circle Line, we wondered if the weekend had already begun in this fair land at 2:30 on Friday afternoon.  After about 25 minutes, the Circle Line train finally did arrive -- sorry folks, a few more hours before the weekend really starts -- and we boarded. 

I took a seat and watched the ebb and fro as young men and women wearing various colorful styles took their seats, chatted or got buried in books or MP3 players.  About thirty minutes later, we arrived at Paddington and ascended stairs and escalators into the main station. 

In my view, the best way to get to the airport is via the Heathrow Express, a high speed train that runs throughout the day and takes passengers all the way out to Heathrow -- a one hour car ride -- in just fifteen minutes.  We bought tickets and got onto a waiting train.  The train had plenty of room, so we just put our big bags aside and then settled into comfortable leather seats.  A while later, a blonde haired woman took the seat next to me and I admired the fine cut of her black dress while she talked non-stop with a somewhat older man who appeared to be her signifigant other. 

The train started up and soon we were whooshing through the suburbs outside of London at speeds up to 250 kilometers per hour.  The train entered a tunnel and we got off at the first airport stop.  The entire journey took fifteen minutes as promised.  

The rest of the trip was uneventful, merely a jet ride home to the Boston area after a week in London.  Alas, I was destined to return to this same airport within a week enroute to Singapore, but that's a tale for another day. 

Writer's Notebook: Writing on the Road

I'm sitting in an airport and getting ready to take my third trip by air this month.  This one is the long one -- by the time I finish the two legs, I'll be on the other side of the world. 

Travelling that much and that far is mostly an endurance contest, but it's also a time of long hours without distraction.  In other words, these long airplane trips are an excellent place to write with minimal disruption. In my case, I've done plenty of business writing on a plane, but sometimes also have the time for personal writing, particularly when I'm travelling at off hours such as on the weekend. 

As regular readers of this blog know, I've written one novel and am more than halfway through the second one. I'd estimate that half or more of these words were originally composed on either a personal or business trip, with much of the writing done on airplane trips. My current approach is to write using a wirebound, hard copy notebook.  The three subject binders targeted to college students work well.  

You may be thinking -- oh, how primitive -- writing with pen and paper.  Truth is, I've written a lot directly on the computer as well, and that works well, but it is less practical on long flights.  Only a fraction of the seats in the economy section have power and in my experience, four hours is about the practical limit on battery power, unless you want to schlep around extra batteries (I don't).  Worse than that, once the passenger in front of you leans their seat back, using a laptop is difficult or impossible. 

Now there is a much better alternative which is conducive to writing on a laptop -- train travel -- but it's only available on woefully few routes in the US.  I do love my trips on the relatively high speed Acela between Boston and New York or Newark, but I don't get to do that often. 

So, even when the flight attendants have ordered you to shut down all electrical devices, I can keep writing until the airplane pulls up to the jetway.  And the words turn into chapters, and eventually into completed books or stories. 

If you're a writer, do you write on planes or trains?  Do you ever write hard copy or is it all strictly on a computer device?  Do you have a favorite computer or one of the newer mobile devices for doing such work?  

If you're a reader, do you have a favorite activity for whiling away the long hours on a trip?