Today I went with Emilie to pick up our visas for Vietnam. We are going at the same time (leaving Thursday) but not with the same tour group. The guys had gone to the Vietnam Embassy to drop off the paperwork last Weds and the visas were ready today. It was pretty efficient, we just showed them our receipt and they handed us back our passports with the visa already attached inside. I’m now on page 15 of 24 in my passport. Ron says we’re going to run out of pages before we leave Singapore… dunno about that.

This afternoon we had Partner’s Lunch like usual and then in the afternoon we visited the Mint Museum of Toys. The museum is located near the City Hall MRT and right across the street from the famous Raffles Hotel. The museum wasn’t quite what I expected because for some reason I was expecting some more modern toys rather than toys from the early 1900’s. It was still pretty cool though. It has 4 floors of different themes of toys. The 5th floor was mostly robots. The 4th floor were superheroes like Batman, Buck Rodgers, Superman, Astro Boy, Popeye, etc. The 3rd floor had hopscotch on the floor and a super comfortable couch but also had handmade wooden dolls from China. The 2nd floor had Mickey Mouse, Felix the Cat, and more. There was a cafe underneath but we headed to the mall a few blocks away for some coffee and snacks.

Here are some of the toys we saw, we were allowed to take pictures but no flash allowed.

Click here for the Picasaweb album.

Which version of the following song do you remember? I only remember the first 2 lines, I found the rest here.

Popeye (thanks to Juno)

I’m Popeye the sailor man,
I live in a garbage can,
I eat all the worms and spit out the germs,
I’m Popeye the sailor man.

Popeye #2 (thanks to Skyler)

I’m Popeye the sailor man
I live in a gabage can
I like to go swimmin’
With bow-legged women
I’m Popeye the sailor man

After we arrived home, it was so hot and sticky that I decided to take a dip in the pool. I only stayed in the pool for maybe 10 minutes to cool down then sat and read for an hour. I borrowed a guidebook of Korea from the INSEAD library since I think we’ll be travelling there during winter break for at least a week.

Oh, and good news! I received an SMS today from the Singapore Pharmacy Board (SPB) and my application has been approved! So this means I can likely start work next Monday! I am supposed to meet with the director of pharmacy tomorrow morning but that was only because I hadn’t gotten SPB approval yet… so maybe I don’t need to worry about it now. It’s exciting! 🙂