Celebrating My Entry to the Late 20’s

My birthday’s over but the gathering’s happening this Saturday, 19 July 2008. We’re gonna have dinner at Ricciotti (Italian, which is a safe choice for all the picky eaters out there. I’ve never heard of anyone not liking Italian food. Well OK except my Dad, who, like many other Indonesians, his age especially, can only eat Indonesian and Indonesian-Chinese food. But not my friends. Nobody’s ever complained of Italian.) It’s gonna be followed by some board-games (I know I know. Geeky. Yeah.) and whatever thing you wanna do after since we’ll be around Boat Quay and Clarke Quay and there are watering holes abound.

I know it’s unrealistic to post an invitation here because nobody reads my blog anyway, but (hi, nobody!) do dress up in stripes and drop by if you wanna.

Update: we’re gonna head down to the Night Fest at 11.30pm

The Birthday and The Best Nap Ever

Last Friday we had dinner at Arab Street’s Cafe La Caire (Al Majlis) to celebrate the bf’s and his friend Jackie’s birthday. She came with another friend, Zach. I really didn’t know what to get the bf for his birthday but in the end I settled for 2 books, on Francois Truffaut and Man Ray and crossed my fingers that he’ll like it. I got  Jackie a red 3-eyed plush monster.

Haven’t eaten there for quite some time and the food is still as good, although service is almost as bad as usual. Surprisingly our dishes came in less than 15 minutes, while we usually have to wait for almost half an hour (I guess due to the small kitchen). But it didn’t last long, we ordered dessert, and waited and waited and waited until we all forgot we’ve ordered dessert, and still there was no dessert coming our way.

So we paid up and had dessert – Sisha from the egyptian restaurant at the corner while laying around on a carpet on the walkway outside the shops. I felt like an elite hobo. I was hoping that we could stay out until midnight and count down to his/their birthday, but it seemed better to just end the night after the waiter added charcoal to our water pipe for the second time. I went home and wasted time playing online games.

I was so very sleepy the next day that I fell asleep during the first session at the museum training. The heavy Vietnamese lunch at Va Va Voom which included huge slabs of meat and rice didn’t help either. But I was pretty glad to find out that I wasn’t the only one who fell asleep. I looked around and I noticed half a dozen other heads nodding drowsily.

I had the Best Nap Ever yesterday. Was at Sentosa to enjoy some sea breeze, and I fell asleep pretty quickly at the beach under a big tree. I tell you sleeping outdoors like this is GOOD. Unless, of course, you are genuinely homeless. When I woke up I rolled around and saw a hairy beer belly, but the upper part of the body was covered by another person. So I thought, “Uncle with beer belly..” But then the hairy-bellied person got up and.. and… the owner of the belly was FEMALE! And not any aunties, she’s at most 25 years old! Shivers.

An Eventful Weekend and More

FRIDAY

Went to the Singapore Art Museum to catch Ket Noi, a performance art event by Vietnamese and Singaporean artists. Four artists performed on Friday, started with something that involved the artist being whipped by a red scarf (missed the start, was watching this video about Giacometti in SAM), then a ‘Silent Conductor’ (or something to that effect), where the artist conducted silence, poured water into her left ear, turned her back to the audience and started howling, and then a woman’s temple where water was transported with nothing but bare hands as an offering. The last one was where art books and magazines were put into a washing machine. Also met some of Billy’s friends there, Angie, Sherman, and a few others. Also Ken, who seem to be the only ADM staff I know who attend openings. He was taking photos of people taking photos of the event.

Have you ever been in somewhere really nice and captivating and pleasant but then something/one ugly enters your field of vision and you just can’t help staring? Well, during one of the performances there was this lady who apparently wore G-string with really tight jeans. She squatted down and I happen to be standing right behind here. What happened was a bad case of plumber’s crack. When she squatted, the waist of her jeans slipped right to almost the end of her ass and we could see not only her panties’ waistband but also the (what do you call it?) vertical part of the G-string right to the end of her ass. Another millimeter and I bet her jeans would just fall off. Eyes traumatized, I went home and tried to forget all about it.

SATURDAY

It’s Ririn & Henry’s wedding in the morning, at the Bukit Batok Presbyterian Church. They’ve been going out for ever and whenever we ask her when they’re getting married, she always replied “Still very loonggggggg”. And then one day we received an invitation to their wedding, just a month before! Sneaky! And they’ve bought a flat! Which means they’ve been planning for this for long! Sneaky! So here’s us and the happy couple..

We went back to town on the train, and when we stepped into the train at Jurong East, this lady stood up from her seat and offered it to me! OMG, SHE MUST’VE THOUGHT I WAS PREGNANT!!!! I’M NOT THAT FAT! We laughed until tears rolled and I didn’t dare to turn my back and look at the lady – I assume she’s embarrassed – and we laughed some more. I dried up my tears and tried hard to stop laughing. But then Aldo was still laughing after so long. So we started laughing again. And more tears rolled.

Since there’s no training at the museum today, I met up with Billy after the wedding and went for a walk around the city. We dropped by the Arts House – which is Singapore’s former Parliament House – to check out what’s on and went into the chamber and tried to experience how it’s like to stand at the podium and talk to the whole parliament.

Then we went to the Asian Civilisation Museum. Last time I went there was maybe almost 2 years back. I remember liking it a lot, but now the place just seem so big and empty and dark and scary. But I had fun nonetheless. They have lots of interactive exhibits and we tried on costumes and learned how to play middle-eastern drum. I wanted to take pictures of the deities, but I was afraid that it works like how it works in Java’s Keratons (palaces) – your film won’t develop when you take pictures of sacred objects – I personally have never tried it but just to be on the safe side of my brand new $500 toy, I refrained from it. I found out that Jamiroquai got his inspiration from Torajan warriors:

SUNDAY

Checked out the newly opened 9km track from Mount Faber, through Henderson Wave and Hort Park. The climb up to Mount Faber from Harbourfront was grueling. It was an almost never ending staircase and that hurt my ass. Or maybe I just need more exercise for my ass. We were lucky that it didn’t rain although the sky was overcast. We could’ve resumed the walk to Kent Ridge Park, but we thought we’d had enough walking for the day and headed to Vivocity for lunch and some shopping instead. Elisa bought a Winnie the Pooh drumset for her niece in Jakarta. So then I went home and watched the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly on DVD. It was rather cheesy and it reminds me of Kill Bill. Or rather if I’d watched the Clint Eastwood flick before Kill Bill, I’d say Quentin Tarantino drew his inspiration from TGTBATU.

View from Mount Faber

Henderson Wave

@ Hort Park: this was supposed to be Dorothy from Wizard of Oz with her dog, Toto. There were other characters form the movie, too. Made out of scraps. And there’s the witch (blond!) who popped out of a field of flowers, it was successfully creepy.

MONDAY

I took Monday off to enjoy some of Singapore’s nature. We went to Pulau Ubin in the morning. By mistake we took a bus from Lavender MRT to Changi Village. Was a veerryy longgg rideeee… We didn’t have to wait for other passangers at the jetty, as it’s school holidays and quite a number of people went to Ubin. We were tired from the walk at Mt Faber the day before, so we didn’t stay too long at Ubin. It’s pretty interesting to see this side of Singapore which looks more like spectacles from road trip out from Jakarta. We cycled to Check Jawa, get some tan lines on my feet from the scorching sun, watch the crabs with huge right claws fight for women and teritorry (When they fight with their claws they make this obscene gesture.. if you watch the South Park episode where they parodied 300 you’ll get what I mean) and had lunch and cycled a bit more and fed the turtles at the temple, and we went back to Changi Village. We felt old. We had to push our bikes up steep slopes, while other people happily pedal up.. But then I like to blame it on the $8/day bike – stupid gears don’t work. Bwahahah. Or maybe cheap bikes are just not made to go up inclinations. Anyway the cycling sored up my groin. On the way back, we dropped by the WWII memorial Changi Chapel & Museum. I guess it’s the Singaporean version of Lobang Buaya. While waiting at the bus stop, we saw 3 girls brats, maybe about 13 or 14 years old, smoking and cursing, and one of them very unglamorously spitted out a string of phlegm. I felt like giving them a good kick in the face.

View from Check Jawa

Another view from Check Jawa

This is where we fed the turtles

At Changi Chapel & Museum

SAM and The Zoo

The six of us went to visit the Singapore Zoo last weekend. Unfortunately I couldn’t stay long enough to enjoy the other half of the zoo – had to attend the SAM Museum Volunteer interview. The training will start end of this month and it sounds like a crash course in Asian Art, and requires us to write papers and all. Sounds like it’s gonna be fun One of the most exciting part of being a guide there would be knowing what most people don’t. Heh heh. So I can *feel* smart. Talking about SAM, tomorrow we’re gonna drop by and visit the Giacometti exhibition, free entrance on Friday evenings. Yeah yeah I know. CHEAP :p

Anyway, back to the zoo – we bought 2 in 1 tickets which includes a pass to the night safari. We don’t have to do them both on the same day, so we’re planning to do “Zoo part deux: Night Safari” this weekend. Aldo mentioned that they’re open at 6 but the animals will only be out at 7.30 – Shenanigans, I say! Shenanigans!

Letting Nature Take its Course

Hmm… Anatomically Accurate, yes?