So Singapore sprung a public holiday on me on Friday (Good Friday), so I spent a leisurely day doing laundry and cleaning my hiking shoes with a toothbrush. That's how much I love them. They look brand new now, all ready for my next encounter with nature, which will probably be in Europe =D. In the evening Skinny David and I went to check out a club at Clarke Quay for some local bands. An acquaintance of mine was playing, so I thought I'd check if he was any good. (He wasn't.) But we were compensated by two other bands playing ska punk and I love love love the ska beat! Plus it was a very pleasant evening as David makes great conversation and is quite hopeless at eating melting double scoop ice-cream cones which makes for good entertainment.
Saturday came and I lepaked at home doing nothing in particular until evening, when I met up with Jen Hui and had dinner at Annalakshmi. This is my favourite dinner place in Singapore by far, an Indian restaurant in Chinatown. The concept is that you pay a price that you think is fair. The first couple of times I went, I paid S$10, but Saturday I paid S$15 because I like the place so much. Hanging out with Jen Hui, needless to say, is awesome. It's a feeling that is difficult to describe, maybe it's because we go way back and we're so familiar with each other that I feel completely secure and comfortable with her. And of course, Jen Hui's Jen Hui. It's impossible not to love her. After dinner we went to Esplanade to check out the free music at the waterfront that they have every weekend, but because they were playing extremely loud music that I wasn't really into, we retired into a cafe where we both hot chocolate and tiramisu, and continued our banter.
Sunday was the day that I volunteered with the Really Really Free Market Singapore. I had first read about this initiative on Wikipedia when I was researching gift economy, and I was really surprised when Eli, my CSer from Switzerland told me that she had stumbled upon it in Singapore! (KL has this initiative called Food Not Bombs, and apparently they had the RRFM also, 2 years ago, yeah! I wonder if they're still doing it.) Naturally I had to go, and when I learnt that they were looking for volunteers I jumped at the chance. So I spent about two hours there folding clothes and organizing stuff and smiling at the throngs of foreign workers who came into the market, and it was amazing.
It's such a great feeling to be able to tell people: everything here is free, just take what you want. I gave away my Talentime DVD (it was snapped up within 5 minutes, yay!) and an unopened miniature craft set, which also disappeared in a jiffy. I got a new book, Doing Good Well and an old book Don Quixote that Asa recommended some time ago. Also, after dinner, there was this amazingly cool yoga teacher sharing tips (for free of course - it is the RRFM) and he asked me to learn taichi, haha. Since I'm Chinese and all that. But I learnt a lot about yoga and the spiritual side of it, and I'm going to email him for further information - I feel that we're very much on the same channel and it would be brilliant to have a practising yogi to talk to about spirituality.
Also I got lovely emails, from Canadian CSer Daniel to keep in touch, and also from Silver, and I got my first interview consent from this guy from Switzerland who's organizing the CS Paella Party, which I'm going to this July! Damn happening online too =D Anyway I'm getting hungry, so I'll just leave you with this wonderful picture that Nex sent me today:
Couchsurfer dude! Awesome!
