I'm flying around the world ...

… again.

Unbelievable how quickly one can get jaded in this job. My last trip literally around the World was in March, when I went westwards to Vietnam, and for slightly complicated reasons spelled out here http://nebelwald-worldwalker.blogspot.com/2010/03/viet-nam-2010-return.html went westwards from there on my return trip (whenever facing a twelve hour time difference, which way around you travel tends to be decided by which carrier currently offers the lowest airfare). This time, I’m going to Singapore.

Again.

Notice a pattern here?

Nevertheless, some of the experience still feels exotic. Being informed during descent, for example, that importing chewing gum into Singapore is illegal (I kid you not). I’ve seen the nighttime approach to Changi airport before, but the sheer number of ships at anchor (hundreds) is still amazing. The Singapore Straits is one of the major shipping routes in the world, and its harbor continually busy.I don’t have such a good view of it, because I sit in the aisle. I generally do, because – that’s what I asked for. I admit I like the view on departure and descent, but … that’s just a couple of minutes while I spend many hours on these flights. And not having to climb over someone else every time I want to go the bathroom is a major convenience.

I’m travelling as part of a team this time – there’s four of us getting out of the airplane, the World Bank contingent of the team which did the Solomon Islands assessment – presenting, discussing (and defending) that report at the plenary meeting of the Asia-Pacific Group on Money Laundering is what we’ve come here for. Of course, we each also pursue a number of side meetings. One might doubt whether the work done at the plenary justifies the resources involved in shipping all the attendees halfway around the world (literally, in our case). But the primary utility of these meetings is the ability to grab a few key players in a coffee break and come up with an agreement of how to move forward.

But that starts tomorrow. We land just before midnight local time (Saturday evening), having started our trip roughly 24 hours earlier, at noon Friday. Travelling West, as we did, we gained 12 hours in time difference, but lost a day crossing the date line. FYI.

Germany plays for third place two hours later. I didn’t sleep much on the flights over here (DC-Tokyo-Singapore), so I’m tired, I’m jet lagged, but still … I stay up. And what a game it was! I get three hours of sleep before we meet for breakfast the next day.

As is usual before plenary presentations of an assessment report, we start working on Sunday. Unusually, none of our counterparts show up, so we break early. I feel like going back to bed, but I’ve seen people at meetings who gave in to that particular temptation, and their zombie-like state does not recommend it. So I check the website of the gym I went to last summer for the schedule, and it appears that there’s a “Mixed Martial Arts” class in a branch nearby that I might just make if I hurry.

It’s an hour of drills – punches, takedowns and the Straight Arm Bar (Juji-Gatame). It’s highly motivating and I am very quickly thoroughly drenched in sweat. I decide to jog back to the hotel for a dip in the pool, but after about 300 m decide to walk (!) to the subway (!) instead. I’m spent. It was great, though.

I do go for a quick dip in the pool, though it’s really more in the nature of paddling around a bit than any actual swimming workout, before meeting the team for dinner. After that it’s about three hours of sleep before getting up again for the World Cup Final. Which is shown from 2 to 4 in the morning, local time. With my apologies to any Spanish and Dutch people who might read this (whom I assume are the only ones whom might disagree), I could have skipped that one in favour of getting more than another three hours of sleep before the next day’s work.

Bjarne says lack of sleep is just lack of caffeine, and I manage to live by that creed until about 1500, at which point jet lag, exercise and sleep deprivation score a technical knock out. This is the first night that counts as such, and as usual I manage to sleep very well. After nine hours of sleep (pretty much doubling what I’ve had in the last three nights) I am ridiculously upbeat at breakfast the next day – so much so, that a team member (herself clearly still suffering from jet lag) inquires as to what I’m on. “Sleep,” I reply, “it’s awesome, and really cheap – you should try it”. ;)

Again, we’re here for work, and that’s not what this blog is about. Suffice it to say that the progress I make in the side meetings on matters not directly related to this plenary are easily worth the price of the ticket to get me here. The plenary, by comparison, is uneventful to the point of boring.

We go out to dinner with the Solomon Islands delegation. I end up having seafood on Clarke’s Quay in Singapore, and remember a dinner meeting I had in Tokyo a little over two years ago.(http://nebelwald.livejournal.com/2008/03/15/ under 6.5)

Then, this sort of meeting seemed unbelievably exotic to me – I recall how envious I was of the casualness with which the others swapped accounts of exotic cuisines in faraway places. Well, I’m there now. I am equally casual about it, because it doesn’t seem special anymore. That’s sad, really. But thinking back I realize that I had decided then that I wanted this, and I got it. I worked hard for it, and it’s gratifying to reap the reward. Though I wonder what it means that next to the somewhat higher standard of living we now enjoy in DC, the next strongest feeling of achievement I get is from having casual dinners in the far corners of the world.

And while the scenery somehow didn't seem all that special to me at the time, it certainly does seem unique to Singapore:

They make custom suits here in Singapore, for a fraction of the cost they would be in the US (or Germany, for that matter) – about 400 USD for a suit. But I’m told they are even better, and much cheaper to boot, in Bangkok or Hongkong. I guess I’ll wait until I happen to go there on business. Should be any year now. ;)

It rains really hard one day – Bjarne complains that the hand wash he did in the hotel room sink which he hung up to dry on his balcony was completely soaked the next day. The Phillipines complain that the hard rain we had here was the side effect of a typhoon which killed nearly two hundred people there. I choose not to complain about my hand wash (I’d done the same as Bjarne).

This hotel has a gym, and a pool. Its opening times are disappointing, but its size is good – swimming has become my number one antidote to the sort of crink in the back I get from enforced inactivity sitting around conference rooms all day and sleeping in aircraft chairs.

A colleague of mine and I also go to Evolve again – she does TaeKwonDo, so we choose a Muay Thai class. Which is great fun. My arms are about to fall off when we Feed The Punching Bag, I’m not used to that. What turns out, in the days thereafter, to have been much worse is the time we spend skipping ropes – I’m really not used to that. I am limping (ever so slightly) for three days thereafter. But you can have good food very close to the hotel, too - and cheap:

Then pretty soon it's time to leave. Home - in a way.