Sunday, January 08, 2006
Wet Wet Wet
It's been raining since yesterday morning. When I woke up, the skies were gray and the ground was wet. Pity we couldn't lounge around in bed. I had to get up and pack because we had a wedding and then the lunch and then it was off to JB for
Cowboy's wedding. It was just one of those days.
The wedding lunch was different. I felt a bit weird because not long ago, I was at the same ball room, at about lunch time, at another
Chinese Singaporean-American wedding. Even the dessert was similar. No one makes a hazelnut royaltine like the Four Seasons Hotel. It is a strange sight to see people at the wedding in full suits and then change out into comfy weekend clothes and in typical Singaporean fashion, take advantage of the free parking just outside Orchard Road and go shopping. We did the same, change out of our party clothes but we didn't go shopping. In fact, it felt a little bit like we were going on a road trip.
Well, technically we were. Across the Causeway into foreign land. And when you venture into foreign land, you have to abide by the laws of the land. Which in this case meant we had to fill in immigration cards. At this point, just as I was about to weave wildly through 8 lanes of check point traffic to find cards, the heavens decided to open up. By the time I got back to the car, I resembled a drowned rat.
That, I was to discover would be the first of many drenchings I was going to encounter over the weekend. The thing about having a wedding at
a golf resort in Malaysia is that the car park is very far away from the Club House, meaning, when we discover the Cowboy's laptop cannot run QuickTimePro to run his wedding slide show and we need to sub it with
Packrat's
Clover*, the trek to the car sans umbrella means I get wet again.
Cowboy warned us last night that we should draw the curtains in our very very large room that could fit my entire flat, so that the sun would not rudely awaken us this morning. But there was no sun! And it was difficult to ascertain whether it was time to hop out of bed to go off on a convoy in search of the true Malaysian breakfast. We did manage to find such a breakfast, a breakfast of wanton noodles and
chee cheong fun from a van, there was a great amount of shuffling at the table to avoid the moving leak from the roof that was headed my direction. I wryly told Packrat that washing my hair during this weekend was entirely pointless because I kept getting a repeat wash by the never ending rain. Get into the car, get wet. Get out of the car and run to the coffee shop, get wet. Get back into the car, get more wet. You get the picture.
The rain, unfortunately, knew no borders and followed us out of the Malaysian customs and back across to Singapore all the way into the Singapore customs where I proceeded to fail the
customs examination that I had no idea I had to study for.
Me (shaking off water after opening the car door and stepping into a rain puddle): hello!
Customs officer: Open your boot.
Me (still shaking off water, somewhat resembling a dog that just peed on its own leg): Ok.
Customs officer: Come from shopping?
Me (being truthful): No, wedding. [BEEP! WRONG ANSWER]
Customs officer: Oh, from KL?
Me (being trutuful again): Er, no. JB (BEEP BEEP! WRONG ANSWER AGAIN, Do not pass go, Do not collect $200)
Customs officer (pointing to bag): What's in there?
Me: Camera.
Customs officer: You buy from Singapore? [Correct answer at this point- Yes]
Me (pointing to Terz in the back seat): Er, he's a photographer [ Strike 3! Failed to answer question appropriately. Go to jail. Do not pass go, do not collect $200 and have no choice but to allow customs officer to check the rest of the car]
Customs officer: I check the inside of your car...
Anyway, I digressed. I was talking about rain. Although I feel sure, the custom's officer's insistence was partly due to the wet and miserable conditions that surrounded him. But eventually, we were let through and back into Singapore. Land without potholes, but also without visibility and fallen trees and lifts that gave up battling with the weather, causing us to climb ten flights of stairs with our overnight bags.
I got wet again this evening, while running out to buy the family dinner. So the t-shirt and cargoes that I have on, have been drenched and dried out about 6 times in the last 2 days. It's quite fortunate that I haven't actually caught a cold yet from all the wet hair and clothes in airconditioning. Time to take my vitamin C and go to bed.
Just in case.
Here endeth one of the wettest weekends I've experienced in a long time.
*Clover is Packrat's laptop as opposed to Boxer, Packrat's desktop formerly.
Ondine tossed this thought in at 21:41
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" Far in the stillness, a cat languishes loudly"