This weekend, we decided to stay in Singapore to enjoy the Chingay Parade, which I read on Singapore's website that it a world famous parade holding over 200,000 people. This parade celebrates the ending of CNY, which is celebrated for 15 days (I realize that 15 days hasn't happened yet, but they wanted the parade to be on a weekend I'm assuming...). Last night and maybe tonight if we are up to it, we went out to the city center underneath the big ferris wheel to watch the parade. I found it a little disappointing. I Think it was because I was expecting a grand parade with huge floats and decorationg running around the whole city. Intstead, smaller groups and businesses had dancers and usualy one huge float, and they walked along a small semi-circle under the ferris wheel. It was still beautiful though, very colorful!
There were floats from the zoo, embassies, government groups, society groups, dance groups, schools, everything. The zoo was my favorite, as they handed out cute fans with bird facts and had these adorible giraffe costumes where they had a 7ft tall giraffe head attached to their waist, and would stick the head/neck into the crowd to be pet. We arrived a tad late because we mistaked where we were going. When Alma nad I got off the MRT station, we ran into a small fair near the marina. There were typical fair rides, food stations, and a huge floating dock with various CNY animals on the dock. We over head a lady at he information say that "the Chingay Parade was overthere". We had stumbled upon the RIver Hongboa 2011, which runs from Feb 1-13th. I asked the lady what it was, and she just kind of brushed me off, she looked like she didn't enjoy her job....
Well when we found the parade, we caught the tail end. The multiple groups would stop and perform, then continue on around the bend where they disappeared. At the end, all the groups lined back up, humans only (no floats) and all danced to this one song they played over and over and over again. I couldn't definatly beloeve there were 200,000 performing at this parade. There was one group that was trying ot beat the World Record for the longest parade dance group.
Tonight, the parade comes back out for another performance. We also say signs for this thing called CityWalk or CityTour, or something that was called "Singapore's biggest street dance party". I think we are going to check it out and see what in the world it is. Because I love Alma and want to embarass her (<3 haha), I will tell you about the ride back on the MRT. So we are fortunate enough to be at the end station of one of the 5 MRT lines near campus. This means when we go anywhere, we always get seats. Since it takes 30 min to get into the city JUST on the MRT alone, sitting is important. This also means that anywhere else we get on, there are no seats. Our feet were killing us from walking and standing for the parade, so one thing we and a few other people like to do it find where the cars connect and sit on the floor. Noone cares, its no big deal. Well Alma wore her dry-clean white pants last night. She hapened to sit near a moving part, meaning she got a huge black grease mark on her pants!!!! (She did manage to get it out later). I was trying to take a picture of it to show her how bad it was since it was on her butt, but we kept getting really weird and concerning stares so we stopped. Too funny!
It has gotten So hot here. HOTTTTT. Think like July in Florida, well maybe May because its not in the 100s, just the high 80s low 90s, and 100% humidity. But, everything is outside. I don't use the AC in my room, because its expensive. Nothing is super ACed like in FL because its expensive, and all the walkways, bathroms, etc are outside. Theres no breeze, apparently when I got here it was the end of the breeze. Great.
So today I went to the Asian Civilisations Museum (they did spell it with an 's', not 'z') because I have to do a museum response on the West Asia (Islam) exhibit for class. It was free students, which was great, and I came in just in time for the free volunteer-lead English tour of the museum, which I took. I Took notes, and I'll talk about the findings in the blog after this. I had an interesting run in on my way to the museum. I was listening to my ipod, walking across one of the beautiful bridges over the Singapore River, when this nicely dressed Asian in his late 20s started talking to me. I was like great, I don't want to buy anything from you, go away, but then he said, pointing to my forehead, you are happy, aren't you? I can tell by this. Yeah, it caught my attention. He started telling me how I am happy, and a month from now I will be receiving great news. He said I have a tendency to think too much, again pointing to my forehead. He said you think too much, you need to let your brain sleep. You can only get 50% done when you do this, letting your brain sleep will let you do 100%. He then went to talk about something like (he had a very think Indian accent) a women he knew who was like me (pointing to forehead and my legs/posture) who did something 5 year and 1 year ago, it was hard to understand his English. After this, we had crossed the bridge, and he said, I have never met you, we have never talked, but I can tell you this. I am studying Astronomy, and he shook my hand and said God Bless. Cool!
The museum was pretty much South East Asian-inspired exhibits, meaning China, Malay, Indonesia, and India. There was the Islamic (west asia) section. It mostly focused on influencial factors to Singapore's culture, such as religeon, thought, and art. Not history. Back in the day, South east asia was one big plot of land, not islands. Singapore was the tip of a mountain. Overtime, the land flooded, allowing Sinapore to stay above the waterlevel. This is why there was no "SIngapore" civilizations specifically from a long time ago. People wanted fertile land, near the water, better for living, eating, and trade. Who wants to live on top of a mountain? That is also why there aren't many ancient artifacts around S.E. ASia, it is too hot and humid and wet. The few that we have are from burials that were done to preserve artifacts and on dry land.
After the museum, I went to a coffee shop on the water for some over prices lattes and dessert. I ordered blue berry cheesecake. It came with a side of peanuts, drizzled in raspberry sauce. I still don't know what to think of that.
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