We are Chi-neese... If you ple-eese... Tum tum tum tum...

First thing frist... I had too many activites in my life lately, my fingers and my memory seemed to not want to work together, literally... I got "typing" block! I guess, as I once said, might as well try to complete one of the latest memory first, which is the day spending at the Chinese Garden.

When I heard that our group would like to spend time at Chinese Garden and do some cultural thing, my sense of out-of-towner started to kicked in. I felt like some over excited caucasian tourist being enticed by the promise of seeing something exotic. I quickly forgotten my allergy reaction toward the bustling crowds. So it's decided that Friday, October the 6th, will be the day where we would get to know our 'roots'... Sort of... Heck, my version of understanding anyway. Being a Chinese Indonesian, our sense of our heritage, tho still strong, it's kind of jumbled with other things. Especially me, been too long in US, too.

A first time in everything, I found out that there's this closer MRT station than my regular Newton MRT. It's Dover MRT. But it's semi in the middle of nowhere. The good thing was that it buys me time to relax at home longer before I rushed my butt off to the Chinese Garden. As I was riding the train, I heard this conversation between this Singaporean guy and his friends cum caucasian tourists. The Singaporean guy, I'm assuming, brought a set of mooncakes. They were on their way to Chinese Garden too. The caucasian girl was talking about her excitement about seeing the Chinese Garden, and then the Singaporean guy mentioned about Disneyland. The girl said that she liked Disneyland... with her somewhat breathless-perky voice. The Singaporean guy said that she shouldn't expect the garden to be like Disneyland, although he also mentioned that he dislike Disneyland also. In a patronizing tone he said among other things that it's too childish. I couldn't help it, my face reacted toward his comment and attitude. Duh? For one, Disneyland was built for children anyway. I was awarded with another look from him. Then I just continued to pretend not to listen to them, though it's hard, hehehe... Don't want to be the opinionated American again.

When I reached there, I only saw Andrea. And I thought I was late. Soon after our gang started to come one by one. Too bad my expat comrade, Gene, couldn't make it. So the other tourists in our bunch were Taeko and Dee's colleague, Hung. We ate at the nearest hawker stall at Chinese garden MRT. It was quite sad that there were hardly any choice at the stall, plus my braces were just got tightened the day before too. There were probably 2 stalls that could actually sold us food, and one drinking stall. They're not prepared for the sudden flow of trourist because of the Mooncake Festival. Even the stall where I ordered my food from had to ask the other stall for rice. Awesome indeed.

See the background in the picture? Those are some of the stalls in the hawker place that we visited

After we ate our dinner, Andrea split and the rest of us continued with our journey. 6 girls (Peishan, Dee, Taeko, Grace and Grace's friend, Gloria and myself) and our 4 bodyguards (Jay, Jon, Patrick and Dee's colleague, Hung), hehehehe.

The sky was not too friendly tho, because of the haze problem. And yes, the haze came from Indonesia *embarassed*. If I were in Surabaya, the shadow of the haze was not something less ordinary, but seeing it in Singaporean skyline, I felt annoyed too. But that did not deter the crowds. And before long, some of us felt parched and sweaty. Jon, Peishan and I bought ice cream at the closest vendor in front of the entrance. As we 'sardined' our way through the lining ticket buyers, we spotted some familiar faces. Well, it was made quite obvious when they started chiming my name too, hehehe... Gabriel, Andrew, Merv and Priscilla were already there earlier... so as good brothers and sisters, we just gave our money and some of our NTUC cards (for coupon purposes) in their loving hands, while we're supporting them on the sideways, where crowds were lesser, hehehe.

My excitement was soon a bit subsided though, when I saw the first glimpse of the crowds amongst the haze and the feel of semi hollow theme park greeted me. I thought the Botanical Garden and the Safari had better feel than this. And Botanical Garden is free also... But I was still in a sugar high over a new place, so I joined some who started to roam the Chinese Tower that greeted us as we entered.

Hmm... Got to ask Ming Chong for our photo as we waved from the Tower. As we travelled to the inner sanctum, we met the rest of the B2 gang. Some of us managed to pose with the make believe "Taj Mahal" on the background.

The whole experience made me remember the long long ago school trip with my friends. Ah the wonder years... It's so funny considering that we're far from the school kids age...

Warning: This film contains a couple of missing audition tapes from some actors :P

The rest of the experience could be summed up as another photo ops. As the crowds and haze worsen, a.k.a. getting late... We started to break the OREO Mooncake that Peishan brought (bi-product of Raffles Hotel) and shared the bounty with the B2 gang.

Here are some more shots from the experience...

And some quirky shots...

Somebody was in crisis :)

Junming and his tough guy look

Hung: "COUSIN!!!... Eh are you there?"

Jay and his portrayal of a school teacher

We left the premises around 11 pm at night... Everybody went straight home. I went back to my newly informed MRT station at Dover... The bad thing about it, only 1 bus went pass my place from this station. And it took a long time too. I reached home close to midnight. Luckily Cinderella made it on time :P

(More photos and extension of this experience can be found either in Peishan's or Junming's blog)