Just for fun I googled “sex blog Singapore,” since so many of my blog hits are from people who did just that.  And my blog turns up as the tenth search result – just popular enough to get onto the first page of search results, although just barely.  And despite the fact that the Google excerpt on that page of results says that there is little or no sex on the blog, people seem to go ahead and click on it.  This suggests to me several possibilities:

1) The people using “Singapore sex blog” as search terms are really not all that interested in reading about sex; or

2) The people using these search terms have a LOT of time on their hands and are filling it in by reading all the sex blogs; or

3) The people using these search terms are really just exploring the world through the Internet and should be praised for their wide-ranging curiosity.

Of course these possibilities are not mutually exclusive.  At any rate, my stated ambition last April was to be one of the top-ten Singapore sex blogs, and thanks to you, dear readers, I am!  Now I can die happy.

And as a reward for you, I will now proceed to blog about sex:

Specifically, my neighbor’s sex.  You may recall from a previoius entry that one of my neighbors was in the habit of using performance-enhancing drugs and leaving the windows open, so that we were treated to a fairly frequent audio program from the lady involved, who would yelp (in ecstasy, or some other state – boredom?) for hours on end.  Well, the neighbor apparently still lives here, but the symphonies have ceased.  So either he’s laid off the Viagra, or he has learned to shut the windows, or has switched his affections to a quieter partner of his transports.  At any rate, we are no longer treated to extended sessions of having to listen to a lady yelping like a diseased chihuahua.  And this is a good thing.

So you soon learn to live with geckos, even though this means that you go around scrubbing their black excrement from the white tile floors, white walls, and yes, even the white ceilings – I am not sure how they manage to poop upwards and make it stick to the ceiling while they’re up there, but they do.  Truly Nature is wondrous.

So I’m not really surprised when I come into the kitchen early in the morning and hear a rustling sound in the trash can.  The geckoes are foraging in there, and when I turn on the lights they skedaddle.  Or when I go to put away the dishes from the drainer, and something with a tail skitters away from me as fast as it can, and climbs the wall to safety on top of the cupboards. I can’t say I regard this as a cheerful morning greeting (before coffee, nothing is a cheerful morning greeting), but these things don’t startle me.

But I do jump when a gecko leaps from the top of the cupboards onto my hair.  A soft little bounce over my left ear, and then the little guy falls squashily to the floor below, landing on his feet, and takes off for parts unknown.

And yesterday I was most surprised at the kitchen counter, when I was making toast.  Unwrap the bread, fine.  Take out two slices and put them in the toaster, well and good. Depress the toaster ignition button, and out flies a shocked and horrified gecko, leaping clear from the toaster cavity by a few inches, landing on the counter and lighting out for the territories.  He’d been peacefully napping or nibbling bread crumbs in the bottom of the toaster, probably hidden himself well out of reach when he saw the bread slices coming, and then was shocked – shocked! – by the wires around him heating up.

I’m just glad he didn’t leave his tail behind.  The toast tasted fine, BTW – no hint of roast reptile to upset even the most delicate gourmand.

Southern California (8 years): self-healing hernia, possibly psychosomatic, aftermath of PhD exams

Taiwan (2 years): nothing

New Zealand (4.5 years): conjunctivitis

Australia (5 months): pneumonia

Ann Arbor, MI (5 months): laryngitis, probably resulting from a cold

Silicon Valley (8.5 years): sinus infection (x 2), blistered eyelid linings

Singapore (16 months): sinus infection (x 2), conjunctivitis, blepharitis, sweat eczema, middle ear infection, hemorrhoids, shingles

Do you see what I’m getting at?  

Obviously, I’m getting older (the list is in chronological order) and am less resistant to various ailments.  But this is ridiculous.  I’ll consider myself lucky if I escape Singapore before getting yellow fever, dengue, and hoof-and-mouth disease.

This is its ventral surface: you can still see remnants of the fur from its stomach.  I like the way you can see the bones of the tail, hind legs, and wing extenders – I hesitate to call them fingers, but those are the analogous bones in us.

This is the back of the bat, and you can see its ribs and scapulae.  Its face wasn’t very visible at this stage; the whole animal was strangely flat, about a quarter-inch thick, and I couldn’t see any of those distinctive nose wrinkles or curiously-shaped ears some bat species are famous for.

To give an idea of its size, I put my index finger nearby.  It’s about five inches long:

Ew, I hear you cry, enough!  OK, dead bats aren’t everyone’s idea of a great blog post.  But I put it in because I like bats; this is partially because I so distinctly DISlike mosquitoes, and bats eat them and other bugs at a furious pace.  But it’s also nice to go walking around the athletic fields at night and see them whizzing around the lamps.  They are amazing aeronauts, and you can see the light shining through their wings.  They are an auspicious symbol in Chinese painting.  And they leave people strictly alone.

Bats of Singapore, I salute you!

I’m pleased with the focus on the individual diamonds that my camera managed to achieve.  I didn’t realize that the coloration of a snake is partially left behind when it molts.  We don’t know what kind of snake this is; no head or tail was left on the skin.  But I am delighted that I got it!  I never had a snakeskin in the U.S. – is this the one thing Singapore offers me that my home country couldn’t?

Here’s the underside: the focus isn’t so great, but you can see its scutes:

So now you know: Snakes don’t have scales, and they’re not slimy.

He’s about six feet long in total.

Here are pictures our offspring took of a water monitor in its natural element, at Sungeh Buloh:

I think this guy is a mere 3 feet long.  But these are better close-ups; you can see its stripes, and below you can see some of its skin wrinkles around the neck nicely:

Hard to get them to pose for you, really.  The ones on campus are shy, although the ones at the reserves seem pretty cocky and relaxed.  But they don’t really smile for the camera – and if they did, the ambient humidity would make it hard to capture the grin anyway.

Quite a handsome green snake, and a nice yellow-bellied lizard.  These leggy lizards are the ones I see in trees all the time here; their heads are often orange, so they’re quite lovely, and very fast.  But I guess the snake was faster.

I guess the snake got a little freaked by the presence of the kids, and started to move its picnic out of the shelter.  You can kind of see the snake’s jaws distended to get around the lizard’s shoulders in this one.  Hard to take clear pictures because of the humidity in the air and the camera’s unpredictable focus.  But below is the clearest shot:

Bon Appetite!