barghers.com

Pre-Work Week

Hey barghers,

As I have promised to keep you guys updated, here is my post. Since I am going to blog about my 2 weeks experience in Singapore, I have broken it up into 3 posts, Pre-Work, 1st Week and 2nd Week. For now, here is the Pre-Work post:

Pre-Work

As some of you have already known, I was accepted into a company to do my internship. So I took a bus from Sitiawan down to Singapore on a Thursday. Arrived there late evening, and was picked up by my uncle. When I arrived at their house, I saw my cousin sister, X, whom I hadn’t seen for the last 3 years. When I first saw her, I thought that she was someone else in her late teens and not my cousin X, but when I was told that she was X, I almost fainted. She’s only 12 but already looks like she’s 17. What’s up with children these days?

The next day, I went to the Ministry of Manpower (MoM) to get my working pass. I was given a Work Holiday Pass, which is actually a pilot programme by the Singaporean government to attract graduates from selected universities in developed countries all around the world to Singapore. As for now, it is only open for undergrads from Australia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, UK and US. I was even given a welcome pack by the MoM. Hey, how often do you get a welcome pack from a government department?

As Singapore’s only resource is their human capital, it is natural for them to get people from outside to help keep their economy running.

The next day, I went to meet up with Chang Yung in NUS. After the sun had set, CY’s gang in NUS hijacked the university van and took a ride to Geylang, the red light district in Singapore. It was a cargo van, and so there weren’t any seats and windows at the back. There were six of us at the back, and after sitting in the van for 5 minutes, we decided that it was just too hot and stuffy inside. So while the van was travelling in the highway at 90 km/h, we slide open the door to allow wind into the back. It was a really crazy thing to do, and whenever we stop at a traffic light, all of the drivers would look at us. We look like a bunch of hooligans hijacking a van with the university’s logo on it, and the best part of it all, we were heading to Geylang to have fun. :)

At Geylang, we ate the famous Beef Hor Fun and took a tour into the back lanes after our meal. It sure was an eye-opener for me, with so many hot chicks lining up along the streets, ready to be ‘banged’. My eye-balls got freaking wild, and so did my other balls. There were dedicated sections of the streets for different nationalities, so if you want a ah moi, or adik, or tang-ke-chi or a chick, it’s all there. Needless to say, as people walk pass those beauties, they were pulled aside and given a free massage. I must say that those from China sure are hot, unlike the image of prostitute that I had in my mind (you know, those mid 30s lady who’s already well beyond their prime time). Too bad I forgot to bring my camera, otherwise I would have shown you some ‘pretty pictures’. :p We went back at eleven something and I spent a night at NUS.

The next day, I went out with Yun Ching, my friend from Warwick. He took me to Vivo Mart, the largest shopping complex in Singapore. There, we dined at a up-market Japanese restaurant. We ate some Japanese satay (grilled stuff on skewers) and drank some sake (Japanese rice wine). The sake there was really good, I must say. That lunch set us back at about S$90. It was a freaking expensive lunch. After that, he brought me to a specialty shop where they only serve oriental tea, mostly Chinese. It costs us S$20 to just have tea, but I must say that it was worth it.

We were taught how to drink Chinese tea by the waiter there. Its basic is pretty simple, and the steps are as follows:

1. Pour tea into teapot and add hot water. Depending on the type of tea, different temperature of the water and different immersion time are required.
2. Pour tea into the ‘communal pot’. The purpose of this is to normalize the concentration of the tea that we made, as sometimes we might make a very concentrated and bitter tea while at other times, the tea might be too light.
3. Then, tea is served into the tasting/smelling cup where we would take our first sniff at the aroma given out by the tea.
4. The tea is transferred into the drinking cup where we take our second sniff at it. By now, the tea would have cooled down a bit, and thus there is a slightly different aroma to it.
5. The tea is now drunk, and we would allow the cup to cool down a bit to say, around 50 degrees Celcius. It is then we take our third and final sniff from the empty cup, where the smell would be quite different.

In my drinking session there, I opted for a type of green tea (can’t remember its name). In the first 2 tasting/sniffing session, the smell of the tea is something like Chrysanthemum, but with a lighter taste. However, at the final sniff, the tea gave out a hint of honey smell which was not present in the first 2 tasting attempts. It was quite an experience for me, and I intend to bring any of my barghers who wants to go there to savour Chinese tea. I will upload the video that I have taken once I get the program to shrink it.

Throughout my entire outing with Yun Ching, he mentioned a few times that I’m like a ‘kampung’ (village) boy in the city, lured by its riches. To him, I’m basically the most ‘kampung’ friend of his. I guess its true, as there are many things in the city that I have not see and my heart has not yet been hardened by the vicissitudes of city life. But I think I prefer it this way, as I don’t really want to be city dweller with a hardened heart. Most of the city dwellers have lost a huge part of their empathy, and I certainly can understand why it turned out this way. But for me, if being ‘kampung’ means being more empathetic and perhaps naive, I think I’d rather remain ‘kampung’.