I remember day one when we gathered at Changi. It was really quite awkward at first because unlike STEP, when our student group met so many times to do research, plan performances and stuff that the trip itself was as if spent with old friends; we barely met enough for this trip and except for classmates or friends, I didn't really know the rest of the people. Walked around airport with my mum for awhile before we took group photos and entered the departure hall!
I remember nothing much other than.. 1) While we made a stop for the toilet, some of the guys came out and when Mr Ong saw them, he went "Huh, you took the banner into the toilet?!" 2) Sherlyn appeared to be mad and said that "she is already sad that this trip is going to end" and asked "am I normal? Is this weird?" Time later was spent mostly waiting for our turn to board the plane. I ended up sitting at the very last row of seats with Sherlyn and Joyce and it was honestly very entertaining because Joyce was super paranoid about taking the plane. Having taken her last flight about 3 years ago, Joyce was convinced that the plane will crash and paid immense attention during the flight safety video to locate all the life vests and emergency exits. Anyway, I spent the flight watching "The Internship" which Angie and I were supposed to watch but tickets were sold out fast that day. (It was good!) Then, by some unknown reason I decided to go check out 步步惊心 because I never ever finished watching the series - I was left with the last two episode, but have seen spoilers before during our y2 chinese RS meetings. Afraid that I had forgotten the plot, I decided to watch from ep 33 and was surprising able to recollect most of that episode. Just when I was about to begin watching ep 34, which is "new" to me, my show was interrupted countless times to tell us that landing preparations will begin soon, so it means that the in-flight entertainment system will be switched off. Really now? :'( *why did I watch ep 33* *ugh* *angst*
Plane mates
After landing, the line to the immigration counters was really long so we queued for quite a while. The BSP people were in the line before us and we just took the chance to meet them at turning ends of the queue to chat and say hi. After being allocated to an immigration officer/counter, we had to queue yet again and there is this red line which said "Please stay behind the red line", followed by the chinese translation which involved the word "線" (in traditional chinese.) Huizhi then made the best remark I had heard all day "Oh... why do they write niao (尿) on the floor ah?"
I think the people around her (myself included) only laughed/facepalmed in disbelief for 5 minutes.
And then Huizhi claimed that there was strong resemblance between those two words and it was not her fault at all for not knowing how to read the word correctly. While waiting for the tour bus at the waiting area, Huizhi was trying to get free airport wifi while I looked around and was greatly shocked when I heard a loud cry followed by wild laughter. The cry came from Sherlyn and I actually caught a glimpse of her trying to take a group selfie and she reached so far that she fell off the edge of her seat. Apparently, she was just trying to take a picture of the people around her. But seriously, falling off your seat was just so ridiculous and extremely funny (and hence I am documenting this for future blackmail.)
Later upon reaching the hotel room, Sherlyn and I, being somewhat paranoid... decided to do things such as knocking before entering our room and making a promise that we will only say nice things after entering (heh heh heh.) We were soon distracted by how pretty the room design was! Afterward, we went on a field trip to the convenience store which is about 10000x better that what we have in sg. Heck, every convenience store in Asia is better than what we have in sg. I think if given a whole day there, we would still not have enough time to explore every nook and crook of the store. They have everything, at cheap prices, and even Joyce was carrying her scientific calculator while walking around. I bought some milk tea (including green tea milk tea!) and an umbrella. Others bought instant noodles and tea eggs, which were heavenly!
Afterwards, we were told to "gather at Mrs Ong's room to receive something" but I already knew that it was actually to celebrate yw's birthday. It was a small celebration which involved a fruit cake, birthday songs and super fail candle placement (apparently, they bought 1 and 5 candles but the one wouldn't stick, so Mr Ong had to hold it, and yw made a huge fuss out of the wishing and blowing out the candles part that it was very amusing. It was also, the bestest cake I have ever eaten - super rich cream, and for once the fruits don't taste worse than how they look. :')
Alright, there should be a part 2 coming up because I ought to sleep soon (there's choir tomorrow) and this is quite a long blog post. Thanks for reading!
x
