Did you know….
the language in which Singapore’s national anthem is written in has its origins in Sanskrit and not Malay?
the Merlion at the Esplanade is 8.6m tall?
the first registered company in the Republic of Singapore is the Singapore International Chamber of Commerce and not the East India Company? (The answer would be the East India Company if the word ‘republic’ wasn’t there.)
The above bits of trivia were answers to three of the 20 questions posed to guests at the Temasek Club dinner last night. The Temasek Club is a club whose members are made up of Singaporeans who are living in Sydney. My uncle is a committee member and so I went along with his family for last night’s dinner. It was a dinner to celebrate Singapore’s National Day.
I got to watch the National Day Parade as a video recording of it had specially been flown in. The video was playing in the background throughout the dinner. It was the usual dinner & dance thing, where there was a lucky draw for which the top prize was a return air ticket to Singapore via Singapore Airlines. Unfortunately, our table walked home empty-handed.
It was fun people-watching. There was this woman who looked like she was stuck in a time warp. Judging from her fashion sense, one would have thought she teleported herself from the 1980s. I suspect she used up the entire can of hairspray on her very curly hair. It looked so stiff that even a hurricane couldn’t blow it into disarray. She wore this matching royal blue blouse and skirt, which wasn’t tttooo bad except she had to drape this netting over her blouse. Imagine a fish net with beads adorning every corner of each squaring in the net. Gosh, she was a walking fashion diaster.
I had to attend this Saturday workshop in school from 9:30am – 4pm before the dinner and so I went dressed very casually in jeans and my fleece jacket. I didn’t bother to go home to change as my school’s near Chinatown and that was where the restaurant was. I must have looked very much like the older sister of my cousins who are in their early teens, as one of my auntie’s friends asked her in a very confused voice whether she has 3 or 4 children! That was quite amusing considering the fact that my aunt’s only 15 years older than me.
For those few hours in the restaurant, it didn’t feel like I was in Sydney with many Singaporeans around me speaking in the distinct Singaporean accents and smatterings of Singlish.
Anyway, I should get on with my work now. Piles of assignments and readings screaming for my attention! argh.