Mullibora, Party of Four

We are pretty much a package deal wherever we go here. This is not a complaint, but more of a stating-the-obvious observation of our time here. We eat most of our week night dinners together at either our south dining room or our east dining room because after an informal cost-time-benefit analysis, it’s more economical to eat at a hawker center or food court than to prepare our own meals. (I did make dinner last night at home – for the first time in a long time – and it was actually nice to eat in our main dining room.) We venture out on the weekends to interesting local places. We’ve had a few meals out at proper restaurants with Fulbrighter friends and some of Johan’s friends visiting here or living here. Because we don’t have a cadre of babysitters like we do back home, Johan and I get to enjoy our evening meals with the company of our children…every. single. night. We are a four-pack.

This past week was especially adventurous because we made it to Mount Faber via a cable car on Thursday night, then to Singapore Flyer and Marina Bay Sands on Saturday to celebrate the girls’ birthdays coming up. We all enjoyed the up-high views in all three places. Mount Faber offered a lovely view of Sentosa and the cable car was an exciting travel experience from Mount Faber to Sentosa and back. The Flyer was a 30-minute Ferris Wheel ride that gave us a view of the bay. The best view, though, was from the 57th floor at Marina Bay Sands, where there is a sky-high infinity pool, among other attractions. Johan and I determined that there was at least one person taking a photo/selfie every 1-2 seconds on the pool deck. It was a pretty amazing sight – both the view and the noticing of others capturing it – and a reminder of what modern architecture can bring us: swimming thousands of feet up with hundreds of cell phones continually snapping.

The girls especially loved their time at MBS and the nearby Gardens by the Bay, which includes the Supertree Grove. After all of our swimming and selfie-ing, we didn’t have time to walk the Skyway there, so we already have a reason to go back. Satay by the Bay is a decent hawker center, too. Our course, we ate together there, too.

Hat tip to my friend Lucy who coined the Mullibora Bed and Breakfast – another name for our Chicago home which has hosted countless friends and family – back in the day when we were a party of two. We’ve latched on to that combination of our last names and now use it to refer to our collective, our crew, our unit, our squad, our quartet. Of course, I wouldn’t want it any other way.