McInternet -- You gotta love this place!

We woke up yesterday morning to the 21^st century's worst nightmare – no Internet. Since we arrived here in Singapore two weeks ago, we had been freeloading off of a neighbor’s wireless connection. It worked Saturday night, but Sunday morning, there was no connection. By Sunday night, we figured out that our neighbor had secured his connection so that we could not access it. I certainly don’t blame him or her (we’re not even sure which neighbor we were freeloading off of); we could have been hackers or virus-spreaders; but it was nice while it was lasted.

So now I’ve been relegated to making the ten minute walk to the nearest McDonalds, which is a free, wireless hotspot. School must have just let out because lots of kids in uniforms just came in. I guess I’ll be making a daily trip for a hot fudge sundae. (I’ll need to check to see how far the signal will reach and whether I actually have to come inside.)

If anyone is still checking this blog, I’ll update you on what we’ve been up to the past few days:

We spent the last three days of last week with Maureen’s aunt. She and her Scottish husband live about a fifteen-minute train ride from Maureen’s parents, where we have been the rest of the time. They have a nice apartment overlooking an old quarry that has become a lake. The area around it has been turned into a park and it is quite picturesque. Saturday morning we went out with the boys for a walk and ended up climbing the forested hill behind the quarry; when we came down the other side, we didn’t feel like climbing back up, but ended up making a much longer trek around the long way to avoid going back over the hill. Saturday was also Maureen’s birthday. I took her out Friday night for shopping and a meal while her aunt watched the boys, and then the whole family got together for a cook-out and her brother’s place on Saturday night.

Sunday we visited the new location of the Citivision church, where I had the honor speaking. The people there were most gracious, but I had a hard time getting through my lesson as my kids were behaving horribly. Any ideas on what to do as a dad when you’re preaching and your kids are misbehaving? Do you stop in mid-sermon to correct them? I would have in Africa, but it just didn’t seem to be the thing to do here. I’m sure no other preachers (or preacher-wanna-bes like me) have ever had this problem.

Now we’re back with Maureen’s parents. She is busy several days this week taking her parents for different medical appointments. I took the boys over to a local park this morning and they had a good time on the playgrounds. This park is also a mini-botanical gardens with some beautiful forested walking trails – and it’s within spittin’ distance from Maureen’s parents’ place. You wouldn’t expect to find such a place so easily in a city of 4 million, but I guess they don’t call Singapore the “Garden City” for nothing.