Thursday, April 24, 2008

Honeymoon in Singapore

I was in Singapore this weekend. As KU said, it was a weekend honeymoon that I had been to :). The trip started off with a 2:45 mins travel time to the airport (as opposed to the normal 45 mins. Thanx to the Olympic torch going through Delhi) leaving me just in time to check in (the flight eventually had to be delayed because a majority of the passengers, turns out, got delayed for the same reason).

I reach Singapore, go to office via the Metro (Our Delhi metro really compares well with theirs) take a cab to the office (Cabs are very affordable, unlike US). By the way, I was utterly surprised to see announcements made in Tamil in the Metro. Turns out that there are so many Indians (Tamilians to be more precise) that Tamil is one of the four official languages!!. After work (by which time I am totally sleepy even after a Coke and 2 coffees), LK & AP take me out for a dinner to Boatquay, a line of eateries with all kind of food (Mostly sea-food), alongside the Singapore river. This was a totally enjoyable and unique experience and would have been much better had the weather been a little more pleasant. I ended up ordering some shrimp whose eyes were staring at me and some huge fish which I could not bring myself to eat [If it were not for the rich source of protein that fish is, I think I can stick to pure vegetarian food which tastier and more guiltfree >:)]. While we were talking I happened to mention the most disgusting food I have had, which was Sushi for breakfast (at 6 in the morning) when I was in Japan, this totally caught the attention of LK who took it as his responsibility as a Singaporean to prove that anything Japan can do, Singapore can do better. With this motive I was ordered a dessert, Durian with sticky rice. Now, Durian is a fruit which stinks so bad that it is an offense to carry it around in public!! (Which brings me to the most interesting thing about Singapore. The place, as NB puts it, is a BIG Hogward, very heavily regulated, it is an offense to chew gum in public!!!! I am sure you cant beat that!!) So I decide to eat the "fruit" (on the positive side, it is claimed to be a very nutritious food), AP warned me that the first time he ate it, he had to run to find a place to puke, so I better be ready >:). And prepared as I was (I sat right next to the river so that I could puke in that), I guess it was mainly because of the sticky rice that I didnt throw up and managed to eat it all :).


Sunday morning was at Sentosa Island, a nice place to hang around and the evening was at the airport back to India. There was a wonderful cable-car journey to the Island, Dolphin show, Underwater world where you walk through a tunnel and all kinds of fish HUGE & tiny swim by you..

It would be a gross injustice to the blog if I did not mention that I misread my flight departure time as 2:30 in the day (actually 2:30 AM) and missed it and very luckily got an evening flight at a very nominal charge. I guess my trips are never fun without at least one goofup to make it look fuzzy enough..

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Interesting to know.