Egged on

I haven’t been on here for a while – sorry guys, I’ve been quite busy.

I came back from Singapore on Sunday. The swimming exchange was bloody awesome. I made new personal best times for 200 m free, 100 m back, and 50 m free (I only swam three or four events – and a relay… I think). I was housed by an Irish-Australian family. When we got to their house on Friday, I swear they stuffed the both of us with so much food: curry, Ben N Jerry’s ice cream and cookies. They gave us cookies to eat during the meet for the following day in case we got hungry. After the meet, the team went to one of the nearby malls for dinner. SAS had their “homecoming” thing happening right after the meet. We as a team collectively decided not to attend, mainly because the American concept of “homecoming” seemed alien to us – though some of the Americans on the team attempted to explain what “homecoming” was about. In the end, we didn’t go – it was an SAS thing, and in any case, we wanted to go around Orchard Road, eat dinner, and some of us wanted to do some shopping.

While around 26 of us were eating dinner, two people (a guy and a chick) sitting next to me at the dinner table began talking – in French (they take French class, so they can more or less speak it). The girl (she’s a senior by the way) spoke to the guy (a junior) in a gossipy tone. In my head, I asked myself: why the need to speak French? The freshman girl sitting next to the junior also seemed bewildered, but kept on eating. The guy (some people deem him to be odd) seemed bewildered by the course their conversation was taking. I don’t speak French, but I do take Spanish and I know that there are some words that are similar, because French and Spanish are Romance languages. I couldn’t really understand what they were saying, but the senior kept on glancing at the freshman girl (who didn’t know what was going on), and laughed when the junior gave matter-of-fact answers, which seemed funny to her.

After dinner, the team split up – some people stayed at Causeway (that’s the name of the mall we went to), while others (including me) went to Orchard Road on the MRT. The train station was underground, so we had to take an escalator. I was in front with my roommate, who incidentally is Singaporean and knew his way around the city and the MRT system (which by the way is really easy to use). People at the back of the pack were laughing. I looked back – some of the girls and guys with us were in gossip mode, laughing and whispering to each other. The junior guy and the freshman girl at the dinner table earlier were a few steps behind me on the escalator. I was busy looking for the the place where we could buy tickets, while at the same time I overheard their conversation, which went more or less like this:

Freshman girl: What were you and [senior girl] talking about?
Junior guy: She was asking me who I liked on the table?
Freshman girl: Oh really? Who was it?
Junior guy: You.

As I walked out of the escalator and headed for the ticket-selling machine, I felt the urge to laugh, and in all honesty, the first word that came to my head upon hearing that conversation was “nasty”. Then I looked back. The freshman girl seemed slightly uncomfortable. The people that trailed behind them walked and glanced at them briefly – observing them, scrutinizing them. I don’t think they knew what happened on the escalator – otherwise I would’ve heard about it.

We got to Orchard Road. Most of the girls with us wanted to go shopping, while we guys couldn’t really be bothered, and decided to just hang out in one of the malls that lie along Orchard Road. The freshman girl went with us. We all agreed that we’d meet up at Borders (its a bookshop-cafe) by 8:30 pm. I decided to walk around Orchard Road on my own for a bit, and everyone kinda split up. I came to Borders a little early, and the guys were sitting at one of the tables. The junior guy was there with them. I asked where everyone else was, and they said that everyone else was on their way. The freshman girl took a taxi back to her host family’s house on her own early.

**

We went to Changi Airport for the flight back to Jakarta at around 10 am. I basically ate lunch there with a few people (Burger King). The newly-built Terminal 3 is awesome. After boarding our Singapore Airlines plane, we went to our assigned seats. We weren’t the only school team returning to Jakarta – our school also sent the rugby team and the girls basketball team – so the plane was packed full of high school students. Some people in the swim team decided to do some seat-switching. The junior guy decided to switch seats so he could be next to the freshman girl. Incidentally, senior girl was on the same row. She went on gossip mode again, and started laughing and talking to the people in the row in front of her. The freshman girl seemed uncomfortable. The junior guy, lacking the sense to know that he’s being used as a tool of amusement, was oblivious to it all.

As the plane began to taxi out to the runway, and the in-flight safety video was turned on, instructing us on how to put on our seat belts, and warning us that smoking in the lavatories was against Singapore law, I feel asleep.