Afternoon Walk

post #254

The training finished earlier than I had thought. So I took the chance to wander around. The first place I went was Bugis Street area. There’s a traditional market there that reminded me of Permai and Glodok. The small kiosks, crowded with people and mainly they sold clothes. One difference though, there’s a sex shop…something you wouldn’t find explicitly at Glodok.

Bugis Market...or was it Village?

After quick tour there, I went to Bugis Junction, just across the Victoria Street. It’s a small shopping place…kinda reminded me of Sunter Mall…Looking around for a unique souvenir for few persons back home and also a Superman related things store. Unfortunately I couldn’t find the latter, maybe my friend was wrong. I had to stop the hunting for a while because I realized that I was so hungry and hadn’t eaten rice since yesterday. So I decided to eat at the Food Junction. And the only thing with rice that they had (which interested me) was Nasi Padang. I went all the way to Singapore and I ate nasi padang…what an embarrassment…lolzzz…But hey, do Singapore have traditional, unique cuisine? I ate Singapore laksa quite many times back in Jakarta, why couldn’t I eat nasi padang in Singapore? *defensive mode on…lolzz.. But really, look at it. J.Co, Breadtalk, Starbucks, McDonalds, Burger King, (even) Yong Tau Fu could be find easily in Jakarta. Maybe next time I should try the ‘usual’ restaurant instead… :D

Nasi Padang ala Singapore

After that, I went back to hotel to put the laptop in my room, coz it found it quite tiring carrying all the way. The road was a little bit wet; rain must have fallen when I was strolling around Bugis Junction. I doubted a bit coz I saw the cloud was still hanging there. It wouldn’t be funny if rain fell when I was wandering around and I caught gold coz of it. But I decided to ‘hajar bleh’ (Indonesian word for go on) with the master plan, which was finding that signature lion statue of Singapore (hence the name Singapore…Singa is the Indonesian and probably Malay word for Lion).

Relying on the official Singapore map that I took from Changi airport *it proved to be very helpful, I went to the Esplanade, where the Lion statue resided (as Mel told me). Took some picture along the way, at War Memorial Park, Victoria Theatre and Fullerton Hotel.

War Memorial Park

Victoria Theatre

Fullerton Hotel

I walked quite far and I thought I was losing direction (though I asked a guy once at Connaught Drive and he said to go on straight…which led me to Fullerton Hotel). I was about to go to Marina Square instead, but I decided to go to Merlion Park and……. There it was…the Lion statue…I found it unexpectedly…hahhahahahaha…Took lot of some pictures there. It’s around 6.30 PM if I remembered correctly and the sun was setting. It’s such a nice view. The part of the sky where the sun set was clear while some of the other part was cloudy.

Left side

City at the background

Then I went to another famous spot of Singapore, none other than Orchard Road. Took the MRT and it was very crowded. But still comfortable. Then I walked down along Orchard Road to my hotel at Bras Basah Road. Wander around Wisma Atria and Paragon for a while. Near Takashimaya, a pretty girl (SPG) approached me, said hi and asked me a several questions which she claimed as survey. I knew her real motive the minute she asked what I do with my income. I saved her (and myself) from useless conversation, saying that I was on a business trip, for short period of time (coz she quickly asked whether I stay for long or not). And she finally gave up and asked non-relevant questions such as where did I come from, what kind of airlines did I take (a polite talk)….when I said SQ, she said that she worked there once. No wonder she’s pretty…lolzzz. But I ended the conversation and continued walking.

Near Le Meridien hotel, I found this souvenir store and bought few. Hopefully they’d like it. There’s 7 11 not far from there, I was wanting for something cold…so I bought slurpee, cokes and instant noodle (for late nite emergency...). My feet were starting to ache…gosh I’d been walking for almost 5 hours….no wonder my feet were giving up. I walked faster with the determination to arrive at the hotel asap. Arrived there, I quickly filled in the bath tub with warm water. I was gonna listen to music while relaxing at the bath tub when my cellphone had some difficulties in reading the micro SD card….Wtf…it’s the second time it did that. The first one, I lost all the data in the micro SD…this time I didn’t wanna lose any…too many precious memories there, pics…sound and video recording…I tried to plugged the card out and used an adaptor to read the card directly from my laptop….Yeah…it worked….I quickly back up the data in my laptop, just in case….

And now(to be exact, an hour ago)…after relaxing in the bath tub for almost half an hour, I feel freshhh…and hungry….lolzzz…now it’s time for a late nite noodles…so I’m signing out now.



Originally written at 30 May 2008, 12.33 AM