Japan. Clean and nice.

So, I recently discovered something interesting in Japan at work.  It involves the bathrooms and how they are cleaned.

In the US, they block off the bathroom completely and no one can come in while the bathroom is being cleaned.

In Singapore, they post a sign, but the nice gentleman who cleans works around those in the restroom to clean each item.

In Japan, it's much the same as Singapore with one key difference, instead of a nice gentleman cleaning the bathroom, it's a couple of ladies. Who apparently don't care where they clean and who is doing what while they do it.

The first time I discovered this, I blithely walked in, saw the ladies cleaning, apologized and immediately turned around and walked back out.  I think learned to look for a small yellow sign or use the stalls and not the urinals.  My compatriot Anthony, who's training me as his replacement is from Singapore. He told me that in Singapore they have no problem with someone of the opposite Gender cleaning the restroom while they were using it, but even he had to draw the line when they started wiping down the outside of the urinal WHILE HE WAS USING IT.

Ask Suzy to tell you about the communal baths here sometime.

Singapore memories

Here's Faith's Beautifully decorated wall. I think she "secretly" wants to be a fashion designer when she grows up.

We recently went for a picnic to east coast park. I bit of a misnomer since it's really on the south side of Singapore. The girls had fun testing out their rollerblading skills. 

All sorts of wheeled transportation abounded.

There's a small beach there. We had egg salad sandwiches. Those two statements are directly related. 

There was a beautiful sunset as well. The kids had a blast playing in the sand. The original intent was to only play in the sand and not the water. I bet you can guess how that went. 

Kate initially asked "did we bring towels". We said no, so she then proceeded to get wet up to her armpits. 

Jace and Brighton both fell in at various points. Nevertheless, it was a fun/sandy evening. 

This was a going away party (one of many that we seem to be going to lately) These are our friends from the left: Will Sumsion, Me, Cameron Nelson, Sarah Nelson, Darren Lifferth, Sarah Lifferth, Nelsa Sumsion, Suzy.  The Lifferths got the Sumsions those fun shirts as a going away present (they're also moving to Japan). 

2 little monkeys jumping off a bed

So, Suzy went to the store and then went to pick me up while Lilybell was making dinner.  We came home to the above area of fun.  Apparently Brighton wanted to create a nice soft area to jump onto from her bed. Jace and Brighton were not happy to learn that they would not be eating dinner until this area was put back to it's former condition.

In addition, we learned that Brighton decided to play with her baby in the toilet.  She had told me this when I got home, and that they had cleaned the baby up in the "bath" using soap.  I assumed she had done this earlier in the day, but no, it was also while we were gone.  Jace had kindly decided to help her clean the doll in the sink, then decided to give another baby doll a bath as well. Neither were water friendly. 

Jace later came down with a packed backpack and stood by the door waiting for us to acknowledge his desire to run away. Unfortunately, it was raining pretty hard, so Jace decided to spend some time under the chair instead. You have to love days like this.  

Art and Science do mix, on occasion.

here's a picture of the ArtScience Museum of Singapore, where we went on Friday (May 13th). I had the day off since I just got back at 2am from Boise.

Here was the first room we came to. It was pretty cool.

Here was Jace in the room of flowers and butterflies

And Brighton

it was sort of a crazy room

But not as crazy as this awesome slide. You could go down 7 across at one time.

They had this awesome Giant Slide that gave me ideas for our next house.

I think the kids spent a half hour on this alone.

 

Here was the bus that Kate made. After you were done coloring, you could go to a scanner, and it would put your picture into the world of pictures. You could also scan it and it would create a 3D picture you could cut out.

Here's a picture of the screen, see if you can find Kate's bus in the video below.

Here was my awesome UFO

Here was Faith's bus

Here's Suzy's original drawing

Here is the 3D rendering.

Here it is on the screen.

Jace's Jet

Faith's "Kate Jet", the words would be backwards going one way and forwards the other way.

The Brighton Bus! I think she's probably driving judging by the result.

This was a picture of the whole screen. A Dragon would come periodically, if you went and touched the spaceships, they would shoot fireballs at the dragon. It's amazingly interactive.

They had another area filled with these lovely glowing balls of destruction and pain.

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Here's a picture of Suzy's seahorse fairy mermaid. So beautiful.

There's also some kind of Angry Squid creature following her SFM courtesy of yours truly.

Here was the SPACE room. It was beautiful and cool.

I feel like we're in a movie.

It helps that it comes with a soundtrack.

India part Duex - Taj Mahal

Here was our first glimpse of the Taj Mahal. Overall, it was quite amazing.

The grounds were absolutely beautiful, reminds me of how they keep the temple grounds.

Here's a view of one of the gates

All the black scrollwork is inset into the marble. The marble is etched about 3/4ths of an inch, and the black marble carved then inset

They also inset many other semi-precious and precious stones as well.

Here is one of the two Mosques. Everything on the Taj Mahal is symmetric. The king build two Mosques, even though they could only use one since the other one was facing the wrong way. It's called "the guest house" now.

The King wanted to build a Black version of the Taj Mahal for complete symmetry to house his tomb (the original Taj Mahal is for his favorite wife)

This is a random picture of the airport, which is of itself, quite random.

A few of the towers were undergoing some cleaning unfortunately, but it was still quite impressive.

Here we are, as proof that we're all there. You probably can't pick out Suzy from the others since they're all dressed the same. She's the one closest to me.

Another fun group photo!

Grrrr

just wanted some perspective, you can see the tiny ant type people up by the Taj.

There were many opportunities taken to get some pictures with the ladies.

Here was a water buffalo.

Some people got to touch it. When I got close, it got all feisty.

Suzy got all baby hungry. The Lifferths had to pry their baby from her hands multiple times.

We ate on gold plates. Just like a Boss.