Singapore Archive
Oh, Right, *This* Is How I Gained So Much Weight...
I am not pregnant. No. 5 on this post was something totally different, and I still can't tell you what it is. But you'll notice I have done nothing to dissuade rumors that I am pregnant. Because the other alternative--the true one-- is that I just gained a noticeable amount of weight researching my book. Pre-book I ran regularly, saw a pilates trainer four times a week and did juice cleanses, but forty weeks on the road was...well, the opposite of all that.
Aside from clothes not fitting, I haven't been that upset about it. After all, MadMen bodies are in vogue these days, and I'm slowly taking the weight back off. I was trying to tell someone the other day at a party that I thought being in the air for 40 hours a month had some sort of chemical effect on metabolism, because I swore that I didn't eat *that* much worse when I was traveling and I was certainly getting plenty of exercise running around crazy slums, pygmy villages and Chinese mega-cities, riding camels and elephants, being chased by baboons etc.
Somewhere around my second pitcher of Tiger beer and 15th satay last night I admitted to myself that's total BS.
I mean yum. This was outside in a food-court like open market with a light rain drizzling down. We also had some fried rice and a stingray cooked in a decadent spicy sauce-- the kind that leaves your mouth tingling in just the right ways.
Earlier, I had a delicious masala dosa in Singapore's Little India, but I was so hungry I devoured it before I could take a picture. Now, I'm on the hunt for this guy:
How Emerging Markets Are Like Dating
I've been with my husband for about 11 years, so I haven't dated for a long time. Instead, I have--bizarrely-- substituted emerging markets for that crush/first-date-euphoria/ew-that's-an-ugly-quality/OK-I'm-sick-of-you-now cycle of emotions.
For instance, as discussed here and Tweeted one million times, I have a raging crush on Kenya right now. Sometimes I'm just daydreaming and people say "What are you thinking about?" and I'm like "Oh, Kenya." I hope to go early next year. Like many crushes, I may find I've just built Kenya up in my mind, and it's not that great. But I almost guarantee you for the first 24 hours I WILL LOVE IT.
How can I say that with such certainty? Because I love any emerging market for the first 24 hours. Singapore is no different. I've been here a day and I'm just blown away. I wonder if there's an endorphin link between jetlag and loving a new country? Anyway, I'm in sponge-mode asking a jillion questions and taking it all in, so I'm not ready to write much intelligent about it yet. But soon.
Meantime the worst and best part of my day:
Best: This is HANDS DOWN the easiest country for getting local mobile access. That's a little unfair, because China is pretty damn easy. But in China, I have to at least point and guesture because I don't speak Chinese and I usually just get basic voice service. Here I walked into a 7/11, and within a few minutes got a local SIM card and week's worth Blackberry service for less than $20. WHAT!? That's amazing. It took an hour to set up, because I have a brand new Bold, and they hadn't set one up before. Indeed, Blackberry has made some stupid changes to its operating system, and I've even been confused by how to do anything on the phone. I was late for a meeting, so I just left the Blackberry, came back and it was done. Wait, I don't know anyone in this country and I just left a new several-hundred-dollar phone with a clerk in a 7/11? Yes. Singapore.
Worst: The streets are almost too clean. It's raining constantly and people are just hosing down the pavement everywhere I go. I walked out of my hotel this morning and promptly slipped and fell. It looked about as cool as it sounds. What's more: I've slipped and almost fallen three more times. Upside: Streets are so clean my scrapes probably won't get infected.
New Book
An unforgettable portrait of the emerging world's entrepreneurial dynamos Brilliant, Crazy, Cocky is the story about that top 1% of people who do more to change their worlds through greed and ambition than politicians, NGOs and nonprofits ever can. This new breed of self-starter is taking local turmoil and turning it into opportunities, making millions, creating thousands of jobs and changing the face of modern entrepreneurship at the same time. To tell this story, Lacy spent forty weeks traveling through Asia, South America and Africa hunting down the most impressive up-and-comers the developed world has never heard of....yet.
Buy it from these sellers
Sarah Lacy is an award-winning reporter who has covered high-growth entrepreneurship for more than fifteen years. She is the founder, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of PandoDaily.com, the site-of-record for the startup ecosystem. She lives in San Francisco.
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