Finally November

After talking to PL and CJWD, I felt better. I'm glad it happened because I finally realised that I was too naive to think that I could cross that barrier if I tried hard enough. All the signs I ignored kept coming back to me and remind me of my stupidity. As if they are saying "I told you so".

I now know better. Some things just aren't worth the effort.

On a lighter note, I spent a very enjoyable Deepavali with D. We went to the new Lee Kong Chian library only to find it closed. There were security guards seated inside on a public holiday.

We then had lunch and went around searching for a present for someone's birthday in February next year. We also got parts of a present for this certain individual at Spotlight.

Buying presents for people who matter is quite enjoyable, even though it requires a lot of effort. I quite miss searching for presents. It's kinda funny because I used to dread buying presents for the mentors because it was so difficult. All of us have birthdays in the later half of the year and out of the eight of us, seven have birthdays in the last four months of the year. These days, we just meet up for dinner and no longer buy presents.

After we went to Spotlight, we continued the search for THE present. Halfway, we went to Times bookshop. This Christmas decorations book caught my eye and I was looking at it with D, only to be scared by a dark-skinned person (no offense to dark-skinned people) who popped out of nowhere. He mumbled something and gave a sly smile with his teeth showing like a mongrel. D sprang away at this point in time and I tried to walk away politely. After he said the next sentence, I was propelled to walk away at high speed. We walked out of Times Bookstore and I was teased incessantly by D. We avoided walking near the bookstore and went to buy tickets for the 6.30 p.m. "Legend of Zorro" show. After which, we decided to walk out of Plaza Singapura for a while.

Saw this French fair thing outside PS. The french goods turned out to be all from Cold Storage (!) Good effort but we walked out after just a few minutes.

When we walked further, we saw that the Istana was open. It was 5.30 p.m., with half an hour left before it closed but we still went in. The security was quite tight. Lots of policemen around and we had to declare all the items like coins, pens, camera, handphones etc. Just a random question: Other than being made of metal, why did things like pens and coins have to be checked?

Other than the clearance, I was also wondering how they determined who was local and who was not. Singaporeans didn't have to pay anything and foreigners had to pay a nominal $1. When we went in, this person asked if I am local, much to the amusement of D. I thought it was a genuine question and asked, "Yes, do you need to see my i/c?". The guy then said "Oh. No. no need." and as D and I made our way in, we heard laughter behind us.

D started laughing too and said that I must look like a foreigner, particularly from China, that they chose to ask me that question. After what happened at the bookstore, she also put these two events together and concluded that I did look like a Chinese national and kept on laughing.

I couldn't help but feel a little ???

The walk around Istana was one of the best I had. We took numerous pictures of the flora. The sky was a beautiful blue and I got to take some really pretty pictures. It was a pity that we never got to visit the Istana house. By the time we got to the steps leading to the Istana house, the policemen were shooing us out.

We worked out a sweat walking in there and back to PS. Felt very grateful for the air-conditioning. It was time for the show. Quite a cheesy show (the hero never dies) but it was quite entertaining, sí? I like Catherine Zeta Jones. =)

After the show, we walked around a bit more and then went to eat a late dinner before going home. Nice.