Rob & Debbie Jensen Family

More Pictures from Singapore & Malaysia Diving

2008-10-30T07:11:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I traveled north into Malaysia for a 3 day diving adventure. I was able to complete my AOW diving certifications, including several dives to 30m. The trip included a 4 hour boat ride to Mersing, Malaysia and a 4 1/2 hour, 40 mile boat trip out to Pulau Aur off the east coast of Malaysia.

Once on the island I stayed at a cozy "Resort". I splurged for a private room, with in-suite bathroom, based on the bed sheet I am pretty sure I got the honeymoon suite. The room was actually fine, and did have a small air conditioner, and I did enjoyed having my own space.

Here is a picture of my full service in-suite bathroom...

I left Singapore at 7:30pm on Friday arrived on the beach at 5:30am Saturday morning. After finding my bungalow and getting a bit of a rest, this is the view from the beach that greeted me after the sun came up.

Here is a picture of the dining facilities, one of the boat we used to ferry divers and equipment out to the dive boat anchored in deeper water, and one with several of us heading out to dive in the little boat. FYI, On Saturday morning we had 30 people with all our luggage on this boat being ferried in to the beach. We made it in one trip.

Here we are gearing up for a dive, and one of me descending on one of my dives.

Cuttle Fish with me in background

Larger group heading out for dive on Saturday

Morey Eel peeking out on night dive

Dude... a turtle

This one's called a Christmas Tree Worm

They come in lots of different colors

A couple with me and others on the wreck in 90' on Monday morning

Back above water, This was the view from my room and the sunset Sunday Night

So time to head back, one last shot of the Atlantis Resort on Pulau Aur

After the long boat ride back to Mersing, we had hamburgers. However, these weren't your McD-Burgers. They were made with love and wrapped in an egg and seasoned with chili sauce before being put in a bun.

This Junk was anchored about a little ways from the resort.

This is a little deserted island (ok, so there is a house on it...) we passed by on the way back to the mainland

I did have a bit of an accident when I kicked a rock jumping into the little ferry boat. It looks much worse than it feels.

So those are the highlights of my dive trip. Here are a few more pictures from Singapore.

I had Durian last week. If you have never had it before, the best way to describe it is it smells like an bad outhouse, the taste is initially sweet, but the after taste is comparable to raw onions... Not my favorite, but a rite of passage in Asia.

I had the Durian while shopping in the Bugis Shopping district. This is the largest "street shopping district" in Singapore. As you can see, the prices are pretty good, and the shops are small.

But to be honest, Bugis is the exception here in Singapore. Most of the shopping is comparable to the states. In fact I have heard several folks refer to Singapore as Asia Light. Everyone speaks english. It is clean and safe.

So lastly, when I got back from diving I moved into a new hotel... actually a serviced apartment. Here is a picture of the outside and the view from the elevator landing.

New Grandbaby

2008-10-20T16:11:00.001-07:00

2008-10-20T16:10:00.001-07:00

a couple more

2008-10-19T19:48:00.000-07:00

Kinda like the London Eye
This is the "Singapore Flyer". Like the "London Eye" it is right on the waterfront, a short walk from the financial district.

Tropical trails at the Zoo
The Singapore Zoo is beautiful. Nearly all of the animals are in large natural enclosures, and it is located in a rainforest. There are several areas where you can walk through really natural areas like this.

Here is the Singapore Post Building. We are on the 13th floor

Here is the view from the building. You can see the MRT station

More Singapore Pictures

2008-10-19T19:40:00.000-07:00

Halloween at the Night Safari. The "Night Safari" is a separate portion of the Singapore that is only open from 7pm to 11pm. During October they celebrate Halloween, so yes, this is a real persons head and hand in a dim sum steamer basket. There were zombies, vampires, etc all walking around the common areas and some of the park.

Financial District from the Esplanade. The Esplanade is a riverfront area with good restaurants and shopping.

Getting Kissed in Singapore. After the Sea Lion show they let folks come up and take pictures with the Sea Lion. Very Cool.

Coolest little Otters

2008-10-19T19:24:00.000-07:00

Singapore - - Week 1

2008-10-19T19:19:00.001-07:00

Yes, These are my feet. For 10 Singapore Dollars (about $6.50US) you can sit and let these "Doctor Fish" eat all of the dead skin off your feet for 5 minutes. It felt like soaking my feet in really fizzy water.

These cakes were in the window of a really good restaurant I had lunch in. The flowers are marange cookies.

There was a really cool working elephant show at the Singapore Zoo.

I HAVE NEVER BLOGGED BEFORE IN MY LIFE

2008-07-01T10:52:00.000-07:00

Well, here goes... I have never blogged before in my life. Rob has done all the "blogging" so far on this page. But it had to happen some time - so here is my first attempt.

Life is changing rapidly for Rob and I. Spencer just graduated a couple of weeks ago. Nate came home from his mission a month ago (a month yesterday actually...), Rob has a brand new job which has taken him to Boise for training so we have not seen much of him in the last five weeks and we will be brand new grandparents in September - about the same time we will be officially empty nesters... So as I said, Life is changing.

Here are a few things that have happened so far in 2008:

Spencer received his Eagle!!!! (He's been a lifer since 14 so we are happy about that!)

Kirsten and Justin came from London for a visit in March. We did a day in San Francisco (topping it off with an exquisite meal at Gary Danko's - thank you Kirsten and Justin!!)

We had a day at the crazy Winchester Mansion and a visit with Aunt Dorothy up in Sacramento.

Spencer surprised us all with his "amazing talents" in March and won Mr. Cali (a "beauty pagaent" for Senior boys - which is basically a fund raiser for Senior Ball and they talk a bunch of crazy guys into "competing" on stage and then girls bid for a chance to have a special catered lunch with them.) Mr. CALI is definitely a coveted title among senior males.

We toured Washington DC with the California High School Chamber Singers.

In April, Mindy came home from Utah on her spring break for a quiet special little visit it had been a long few months with morning sickness.

Spencer, had Senior Ball also in April. AND THEN IN MAY...

HE CAME HOME - Nate returned from serving a two year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Mamma's pretty happy about that.

Which brings us to June:

We had end of the year activities like pops concert and Powder Puff.

(I know a little disturbing...)

We then hade actual graduation activities like

Seminary Graduation (above) and Bacalaureate (below)
And of course, ACTUAL GRADUATION - CLASS OF 2008

During all the graduation stuff we got to have Mindy and Matthew home for a little while. We took a family day in the midst of Missionary Reports and open houses and graduation activities. We discovered the best Northern CA beach ever. Sunset Beach. The weather was perfect, the water was freezing (as always) and the company was awesome. It was a fantastic day.

"Baby Opal's" first boogie board ride.
Now we are in the monthe of July. We will be soon heading up to Utah and Idaho for two weeks after the 4th of July. And then on July 30th we are heading back east for the 1st Robert Jensen Family Reunion. Everyone will be there except Cameron who is serving a mission in Recife, Brazil at this time. We will update you after vacation. Talk to you soon!!!!

Rob's New Office

2008-02-17T21:52:00.000-08:00

You've all heard about my new office, but now you get to see it. I am very happy with it. Debbie was a great trooper, checking out all the different furnature stores with me last month. After a long day with no success, we decided to go to IKEA to get some bookshelves and came home with a full room of furnature.

Dad & Cameron Yosemite Trip

2007-11-27T07:33:00.000-08:00

September 2007
On the weekend of September 12-15th, Dad and Cameron went on our special "before-you-leave-on-a-mission" trip. Thursday I turned my computer off around 3pm, and Cameron and I jumped into the van (which Cameron had so efficiently already packed up) and headed east. We stopped for dinner at IN n Out in Tracey, then another 150 miles, pretty much due east to.... Yosemite. We arrived at our campsite in the dark (around 9:30), set up the tent, then went for a walk. The moon was just a sliver, so we could see like a billion stars. Around 10 we climbed into our sleeping bags and got a good night sleep. The next morning we woke up around 8, packed everything up and drove to yosemite village to catch a shuttle up to Glacier Point .

We had a bit of an adventure getting to the shuttle (drive to the pick up point, no parking, back to the parking lot, where is the bus to the shuttle.. ok, here's the bus, we have 5 minutes. wow, just made it). Then we had a nice 1 1/2 hour tour up to the top of glacier point. where we had lunch.

So at 12:30 last friday we started our hike back to the bottom of the valley. Here is the description of the hike from the Yosemite web site.

Panorama Trail (strenuous)
8.5 miles/13.7 km one-way to Valley floor (via Mist Trail); 6 hours for 3,200 feet/975 m descent
Begin at the Panorama Trailhead, Glacier Point (trails ends at Happy Isles in Yosemite Valley) As its name implies, this trail offers some incredible panoramic views of Yosemite Valley. The trail crosses Illilouette Fall after 2 miles ( 3.2 km) and continues partially uphill along the Panorama Cliff. At the top of Nevada Fall, the trail joins the Mist and John Muir Trails to Happy Isles.

Cam took lots of pictures, but they aren't on my laptop yet, but I found a blog on a website with pictures I am including to give you an idea of how beautiful the hike was.

Here is a link to a cool virtual tour of the trail this picture was taken from http://virtualguidebooks.com/CentralCalif/Yosemite/VernalFallsMistTrail/MistTrailAboveMist.html
So the hike was really strenuous, and my legs were like rubber when we finished around 6:30. We jumped into the car and drove into the village and had pizza for dinner. (There are good restaurants in the park). Then we drove to our campsite for the night, and just slept in the car. we were too tired to set up the tent.

Saturday we got up and drove out to see a different part of the park, then back to the village to see a few sights we had missed on Friday, like watching the rock climbers 2000 feet up El Capitan (believe it or not the record for climbing this 3000rock face is 2 hours and 48 minutes)

Then around noon we pointed the car west and headed home. Stopping at Del Taco for lunch, we made it home in time for Cam to go to Big Daves drive in. I stayed home... I could hardly move. But now I am nearly healed up and ready to go hiking again. Maybe this summer when Nate gets home we can go. Yosemite is a beautiful place, you will love it.

London and Lake District Trip

2007-11-27T06:21:00.000-08:00

We made it back from England, We had a wonderful time with Kirsten and Justin. I won't bore you with a day by day travelogue, but instead will just share some of the highlights.

First was the flight. The seats were configured 2 4 2 so I put Mom and Spencer together and I sat by myself. Both directions I sat next to really nice people. We talked about lots of things, and even talked about the church both times. In fact on the way out the guy wanted to know all about the church, so I told him about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, and what Temples are for.

Next was Church on Sunday. The Romsford ward is kind of small, Spencer called it a branch which Kirsten didn't appreciate. Priesthood was most interesting. The Elders quorum president is French, and the quorum is really small. In fact there were 9 of us there, 2 missionaries, Justin and I and 5 from the ward. But the best part is how diverse it is. Of the 9 people in the meeting, only 3 were from England. As I said the Pres was from France. There were 2 members origionally from African nations, one of the elders was from Dresden Germany, the other from Kaysville UT, and me. So only Justin and 2 of the other ward members were from England. With all of the accents it was very cool. One of the African members bore his testimony of personal revelation as it pertained to his conversion story, which was very cool. But the whole experience was great because the church really is the same where ever you go in the world.

The Cottage. The place Kirsten found to stay at was awesome. It was really big, 4 bedrooms, two stories, a nice family room with two big couches and an overstuffed chair for reading, a great TV set with satallite. There were two big bathrooms with great showers and tubs. And a great kitchen with a table big enough for all of us to eat together. It was perfect. But don't think it was just a boring house. it was post and beam construction, with exposed beams and a 6' (almost) ceiling that Spencer and I had to kind of duck our heads as we walked around, which was kinda cool. Justin and I's favorite activity was playing with the Wii. They brought up 3 games, Sports, a Brain game, and Resident Evil. I wasn't very good at Resident Evil. I must have gotten my head cut off with a chain saw like 20 times. It was really funny. But I redeemed myself with the other games. The sports game has baseball, tennis, golf, bowling and boxing. I got pretty good at all but the boxing, and was able to keep up with Justin at all of the others.

The Mine. We went to the coolest mine. It is a slate mine, where they get the rock that they make stone roofing tiles from. This particular mine is the one they got the slate for Buckingham Palace and St Peters Catheral from. It was very interesting to hear about how hard life was for the miners, and why they mined the slate, and how they made the tiles. And walking through the mine was really cool. I hit my head really hard twice, so I was very glad we had hard hats and miners lights.

Truck Spotting. Justin has a new hobby. There is a trucking company that has these green and white trucks. Lots of them, thousands of them, and they name each one with a girls name. Things like Emma Louise, or Wendy or Ema Jean, they even have a Paris Hilton... anyway there is a club that you can join that sends you a book with the names of all of them. Then as you drive around and spot them you write down the name, where you saw it and the date. Then when you get home you enter it into a website and you get ranked against all of the other spotters. So as we drove around Justin and I tried to read the names off of the trucks on the other side of the freeway. We got something like 30 of them, which was good enough for Justin to break into the top 1000 spotters. Great fun.

The roads. The roads are crazy narrow, and the speed limits are crazy fast. The country roads are all 2 lanes, 2 narrow lanes (think that really narrow section of Norris) that are always squeezing down to one lane, often on blind corners. And the speed limit on them is 60 mph on these crazy roads, which is more of a challenge than a limit. All I can say is I am glad Justin was driving. Don't get me wrong, the roads are beautiful, and fun to drive on, but I am sure he was stressed out.

The Lake District. OK, now to talk a bit about the Lake Country. It really is beautiful. First off everything is green, and organized. Even in winter, the fields get lots of rain and the sheep keep the grass mowed, so it was all very beautiful. My favorite thing are the walls. Instead of barbed wire fences, they have walls in their fields. Some of them date back many hundreds of years. The fields don't have any rocks in them, because they were all picked up long ago to make the walls. these walls go on for miles and even go up and over mountains. They are the coolest thing. In fact the roads and wall sometimes came together as we drove down 1 lane roads with 7' walls on both sides of the road with green fields full of sheep on both sides of us. It was like driving down a narrow canyon very cool.

But the best part of the trip was spending time with Kirsten and Justin. And we had lots of time to do that. Basically, other than sleeping, we were with them. Whether we were sitting around their flat and talking, 26 hours in the car driving around the countryside, eating good food in restaraunts, playing games on the Wii, watching East Enders or touring cool sites like castles, mines, ruins, stone circles, visting waterfalls, or walking down beautiful paths, we were able to really enjoy their company.

All in all it was a great trip.