Had an unexpectedly good time at the ASEAN scholars reunion hosted by the Singapore High Commissioner (Who is a Rafflesian and reminds me of **Vivian Balakrishnan... I have always had an aversion to Vivian Balakrishnan since having had the misfortune of listening to his politically correct speeches at several functions)
The food was actually good! After all the crap Singapore fed me for 2 years, I was pleasantly surprised by the spread of roast lamb, popiah, char kuay teow, rojak, nonya kuih and ice kacang. Three cheers for the High Comm for having had the foresight to employ Malaysian caterers! With the exception of having misheard someone say "try the clams. Its good" when they actually meant "try the LAMB" and thus I spent quite a while searching for non-existent clams, I was pretty satisfied.
And the meeting up with old friends was the best part! There was so much to talk about: "What have you been doing?" "Are you working?" "Where are you going?" "What will you be studying?" "Are you going back to Singapore?" "So is your curly haired boyfriend in OCS?"
Ok, only one person asked the last question, and proceeded to hound me about it the whole night. I refuse to talk to YOU anymore!
Meeting Aseans from ages ago was cool too! There were people there who were scholars even before I was born!!
I went home with a mild headache though... a result of gulping down half a glass of red wine in my hurry to talk to Ling (whom I hadn't seen since I moved out of Eton hall a year and a half ago). When will I learn that the golden rule is to sip not gulp? Ow...
And I really hope no one attributed my gabbering away non-stop to the copious amounts of alcohol in the room... but as one senior said "Drink up! Singapore paid for our education, so why shouldn't we just milk them dry on the alcohol too?" (I noticed too that his face was very red and that he seemed a little unsteady...)


** Vivian Balakrishnan is an up and rising Singaporean politician who's in a perfect position coming from a mixed parentage (read: racial intergration), well educated (read: a successful product of the Singaporean education system), charming (read: always politically correct) and in line to take over from the Gohs and Lees of the last generation. And yeah, Vivian is a HE.