- just "plane" bored, oct 6, 2006 -

i'm blogging from the plane ... airplane ... jetstar plane bound to singapore ... no, not really blogging cause i don't have a connected pc right now ... but yes, i am blogging using my pen and a magazine ... what magazine? the complimentary magazine from jetstar. i don't have a clean sheet of paper but i'm bored out of my wits and i need to write something ... anywhere.

we - chireh, farfetch and papa d - left for taipei at around 630 pm i think. the pilot said that we'll arrive in sg at 1120 pm ... it feels like we've been travelling for ~4 hours now but when i asked papa d the time, it's only @##$*@ 840 pm!!! hay, we got a budget flight so there's no free food ... which is okay but i didn't expect that there will be no in-flight entertainment .. no tv! ... i'm not asking for individual sets ... you know ... the big projector screens will do me just fine. but why am i bitching? it's a budget flight, anne ... a budget flight. so there.

i brought a book with me ... wrong books. one is about living in balance telling me i'm asleep and a book on mythology. don't get me wrong, these are excellent books ... just not appropriate to alleviate my boredom. chireh and i ordered some nuts for 2usd. it was alright. i was entertained for a moment there but when the nuts were gone ... i'm back to being stone bored. i'm still bitching, am i? i'll stop that ... should i go to sleep? i don't want to sleep. i tried - in vain. baka dahil excited ako to see jeni ... hmm, i'll make a list! yes, i'll make a list on how to avoid being bored on budget flights *without disrupting other passengers, that is* ...

1. think about your purpose in this planet
2. look outside the window and wonder, "what is out there????" *recommended for night flights*
3. compute your chances of winning a lottery ... or compute the square root of 72,638,510,249,872
4. play spirit of the ballpen - don't know the game? ask me. but there's a catch, it requires at least 2 players
5. play spirit of the coin - see item 4
6. come up with a design for your own budget airplane
7. do interpretative dancing ... on your seat ... with or without music
8. order in-flight refreshments ... order a lot.
9. write on yourself ... example to follow.
10. stare into space

finally, we've arrived at changi airport, terminal 1 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Terence_Ong/Gallery/Changi#Terminal_1) ... this airport is nice ... not too-high ceilings but modern-looking, colorful, vibrant ... i love it ... if this place speaks of what to expect in sg, i'm definitely excited ... off to meet jeni now!!

note - after meeting jeni, we headed to our hostel - the inn crowd (http://www.the-inncrowd.com/hostel.htm) in little india ... the streets of sg are fabulous ... the architecture is amazing ... it was like travelling along a very, very big makati city ...

- my hero, oct 7, 2006 -
we started our day by looking for another place to stay ... the atmosphere of inn crowd didn't suit us ... we were expecting more - as an example, quoting what they said in their website - "personal moment in our country club styled toilets & showers" but that was soooo not the case ... the 3 adjacent shower rooms don't have a main door ... don't have individual drains ... 2 toilets are sharing one main door ... meaning, to go out of the second toilet, you have to go through the first one - literally go through the first toilet ... some more thoughts on these from my dear friend chireh - http://www.flickr.com/photos/santos1978/263126308/. so we transferred to madras hotel (http://www.madrassingapore.com/) where we got a family room - the five of us together in one room and we even have our own bathroom ... and it was clean and private ...

segue ako ... i like the "exotic-ness" of little india ... the buildings - low and colorful - definitely transported me to india : ) ... i know, i've never been there but i bet it has the same feel as this india in singapore ... the streets can be dirty but it didn't really diminish my appreciation of the place ... i am so amazed with their culture ... some men and a lot of women still wear their traditional garb ... they were celebrating Deepavali right now (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diwali) and it's so colorful ... what i've seen in their culture is full of color ... i soooo like it ...



before we got around the city, we had to "battle" the transportation system (i think this is normal whenever you visit a new country) ... sg has those vendo machines for mrt tickets ... and it took us a while to figure it out ... and it was like it's running windows 98 on a pentium 2 ... ok, i'm exaggerating ... but the fact still remains, the machine is slow ...
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today's itinerary

(1) national museum - just saw the cartier exhibition ... the museum only had a soft-opening ... not much to see yet ... some of the cartier pieces were nice ... but most of them were .. hmmm ... too flamboyant for me ... no pictures allowed ... but here is the facade of the national museum ...

(2) lunch at a nearby food court ... many many choices!!!! ... i got a vietnamese grilled pork and jeni got a chicken biryani *need to find the picture*

(3) this isn't really a part of today's itinerary but it would explain the title - "my hero" ... hmmm, heroine??? i'll stick with hero :D ... jeni and i went to the restroom to wash our hands ... when we got there, there was this old indian lady in a wheelchair who was getting mad at everyone ... she wanted to use the toilet but there was no stall for handicaps ... soooo, she ordered 4 of us (jeni, me and 2 singaporean girls) to help her ... carry her and help her do her thing ... which happened to be thing number 2 ... the singaporean girls were scared and they were way too thin ... and the stall was small ... it ended up that only me and jeni were assisting the lady .... and later on, it ended up that only jeni was assisting the lady because 3 people can't fit inside the stall ...
i was soooo proud of jeni - how she handled everything .... she was calm and understanding and comforting ... the lady was scared that she might fall - she kept saying something like this in her high-pitched voice - "please don't let me fall ... please ... please hold me" .... and jeni just assured her and assisted her ... the lady was sincerely thankful ...

(4) singapore art museum - a lot of contemporary pieces and there were a number of filipino art work ... i can't help but feel proud ... one of them was called "kinupot" by edgar talusan fernandez was so moving ... it was a sculpture covered with a white cloth with silhouette of hands and feet *and head, i think* trying to "get out" of the cloth

(5) night safari (http://www.nightsafari.com.sg/index.html) - this was a blast ... closest i've been with wild animals ... their tram ride around the zoo is cool ... too bad none or our cameras worked because the lighting around the area is not really good and flash is not allowed ... and there this area where you can get way up close and too personal with bats ... creepy but fascinating ...