Accumulate Memories

One of my colleague says that a place is only as good as the people you know there and I think he is accurate. Singapore doesn't have much in terms of sightseeing or activities, but I love being here because of my friends at work and home. 

Life is good as I feel like Singapore is not longer a place I am visiting but somewhere that I belong and I am making memories that I will cherish. 

Every day is a good time with friends. At work in the morning sometimes we have breakfast together and lunch is always with different colleagues. Spontaneously we do things together in the evening usually it is dinner but once we went to watch a movie together (Lucy). But for a typical day I go home to eat out with friends at the hostel and then we usually talk and play card games until late in the evening. 

Sadly I lost a card game (Spit) and as a consequence I had to cook for Vatalji (the boy in the stripped shirt). He is from Latvia, but he is Russian. Miko and Vatalji made a Russian cherry dessert and I made mash potatoes, fried potatoes, baked potatoes with bacon, and honey mustard chicken. It was a good evening together as we prepared the food and ate.

 Although the sad part about making friends overseas is that eventually someone has to go back home... We had to have several goodbye parties and the first one was for Akshay from Sri Lanka. He came here for three months for an internship. So we had a goodbye picnic for him. We set everything up and then we lead him there with his eyes closed. haha It was a fun evening as we all hung out one last time and took a lot of pictures. As you can tell in the picture we are having a good time :)

In the picture below are my two of roommates with our "boyfriends." The one on the right is Jaehee and she is from Korea and the one on right is Alice (her American name) and she is from China. 

                                                                                                                                                                 

One weekend I went with some roommies and Karolis to Johor Bahru (Malaysia). It took forever to get on the bus and through security in both countries, but we made it after like 3 hours! Anyway, it was an ok time, we hungout at the mall while we waited for Wenpo (boy on the right) to come back with the car to take us to a message parlor. Guess what? I got my first message ever!! I took an one hour Thai Aromatherapy. It was really awkward for me since I had to take off all my clothes and got touched in places I've never been touched. She squeezed my butt! Somethings she did felt good, but I don't think I will be having another message for a long time. In the picture below we are having dinner at a popular outdoor foodcourt.

Then we had to have another goodbye party for Danny (Korea) and Ryusuke (Japan). It is always nice to see their reactions as we bring out the cake and say our goodbyes. 

I cooked one evening for my friends. It was a good time as we all worked to put together dinner and have it together. I made fried potatoes with different kinds of chicken and a salad! 

Then the next weekend I went with Balal, Jaehee, and Vitalji to Kuala Lumpur. Our bus left at 12pm on Friday night and we left a little late and so we had to run to make it to the ticket office in time. We arrived in the city at 4:30 in the morning! So we walked around, found our hostel, had a traditional Malay breakfast hung out at McDonalds and then we went to the Batu Caves. The area had a lot of monkeys so I took some candy that someone threw to them and several monkeys came and took the food from my hand!

The cave entrance is almost 300 steps. It was am exhausting walk but we made it to the caves. In the cave is an hindu temple and while we were there they were performing a ceremony so it was interesting to watch.

Then we decided to go to KL Tower, massage (I slept in the lobby), Little India, and Petronas Tower. Behind the Petronas towers was a lake full of lit water fountains and they put on a show. It was beautiful as the colors and water shot out in different patterns. In the evening we ate at Middle East restaurant and bought fruit at food stalls. It was a long day since we mostly walked everywhere. The next day was a boring since we couldn't find the lake we wanted to see and then we found out after walking for a couple of hours that it was closed. Then we went shopping the stuff is cheap, but the style is weird so I didn't see anything I liked... Anyway, we were late again in leaving for our bus home so we told the taxi we were in a hurry so he sped a little for us and then we ran to get our ticket! But we made it and we got home around 3pm...

It was the Mid-Autumn festival and we had a picnic to celebrate. We lit lanterns, ate moon cake with fruit, and drank Jasmine green tea. It was a good time with everyone as we learned about the story behind the festival. http://www.travelchinaguide.com/essential/holidays/mid-autumn-legends.htm

Each day brings wonderful times with friends. I am glad I came and life here is good as I collect memories to cherish.